The meat is not really at issue. Neither is the label.
It's the need for folks to buy something with a nationalistic label, where the problem begins.
Court affirms imported beef still allowed to be labeled "Product of USA"
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Re: Court affirms imported beef still allowed to be labeled "Product of USA"
#32I'm thinking of this from a product recall point of view.
If some sort of pathogen or other issue is discovered in CountryX, you would probably think "whew, not my problem. I only buy beef from the US" and ignore everything else about it.
Feels like it's setting up a bad situation but hopefully they have mitigation approaches.
Re: Court affirms imported beef still allowed to be labeled "Product of USA"
#33In the US, Tic-Tac has zero calories. The same Tic-Tac is advertised in the EU as having "2 calories". If a pack full of candy, 0.5g (edit) sugar each, can be sold as zero-kcal candy, then what's the fuss with meat labelling? Not lobbied enough?
You have a point but it's 0.5g each candy so they're in the area of rounding errors. And as every programmer knows just one rounding error won't bite you, but when (often) it gets multiplied...
The EU probably requires calculating energy in kilojoules (which are 4x calories) and then converting back to calories which results in different rounding.
Re: Court affirms imported beef still allowed to be labeled "Product of USA"
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Calling food that is 90%+ made in another country a "Product of the USA" is just insulting and I think if there was no money involved in the judges' decision making they'd just call this what it is; deceptive trade practices.
The judge is likely interpreting a law that is worded to result in exactly this outcome.
2 out of 3 judges are interpreting the law this way. This went all the way to an appeals court. There's a strong implication that there is quite a bit of room for the judges to maneuver.
The minority opinion judge said > if consumers are deceived by the label, “Product of the U.S.A.,” then that label violates both the FMIA and USDA regulations.
Re: Court affirms imported beef still allowed to be labeled "Product of USA"
#35Lobbying at its finest – an open form of corruption. The system needs an institution controlling these "interest groups". A force that can weigh the millions of dollars they spend to sway decision makers' opinions against "the greater good" (which often turns out to be public health). The same goes for the unneccessarily prolonged fight against tobacco companies and junk food in schools.
> tobacco companies and junk food in schools Bear with me, I think these are actually two examples of net good (potentially) done by lobbyists, where their (admittedly uncaring) business incentives end up standing up for what people want. Tobacco and junk food are big targets for the "protect us from ourselves" crowd who think they should dictate values to other people. Just because they aren't good for you, governme…
> Tobacco and junk food are big targets for the "protect us from ourselves" crowd who think they should dictate values to other people. Just because they aren't good for you, government shouldn't be telling people what to do
Schools should absofuckinglutely not be serving, nor even making available, junk food to kids on any kind of regular basis. This isn't the government raiding your cupboards and throwing out things they don't like.
Re: Court affirms imported beef still allowed to be labeled "Product of USA"
#36The meat is not really at issue. Neither is the label. It's the need for folks to buy something with a nationalistic label, where the problem begins.
If the standards and regulations that goverend the raising and production of meat were the same across all nations, then I'd agree that the decision would be a purely nationalistic one.
Re: Court affirms imported beef still allowed to be labeled "Product of USA"
#37Lobbying at its finest – an open form of corruption. The system needs an institution controlling these "interest groups". A force that can weigh the millions of dollars they spend to sway decision makers' opinions against "the greater good" (which often turns out to be public health). The same goes for the unneccessarily prolonged fight against tobacco companies and junk food in schools.
Agreed. I call these "Lorax problems" when there's nobody there to speak for the common interest. It generally takes a drastic public spectacle to muster the political wherewithal to make a law in these cases. It took DDT killing bald eagles for the feds to make the EPA and the Clean Water and Clean Air acts. It took an oil spill to hold oil, inc. accountable for (a fraction of) their pollution.
Re: Court affirms imported beef still allowed to be labeled "Product of USA"
#38Lobbying at its finest – an open form of corruption. The system needs an institution controlling these "interest groups". A force that can weigh the millions of dollars they spend to sway decision makers' opinions against "the greater good" (which often turns out to be public health). The same goes for the unneccessarily prolonged fight against tobacco companies and junk food in schools.
> tobacco companies and junk food in schools Bear with me, I think these are actually two examples of net good (potentially) done by lobbyists, where their (admittedly uncaring) business incentives end up standing up for what people want. Tobacco and junk food are big targets for the "protect us from ourselves" crowd who think they should dictate values to other people. Just because they aren't good for you, governme…
In a lot of cases, the relationship between a product and a consumer is abusive. Take heroin for example. There is a huge (black) market for heroin. People "want" it, and will become addicted to it, and "want" it even more. The monetary value of a product is not a measure of how much good it does.
Re: Court affirms imported beef still allowed to be labeled "Product of USA"
#39Three words are not enough to convey the biography of a cow.
Re: Court affirms imported beef still allowed to be labeled "Product of USA"
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree that your first example would qualify as a product of the USA. At least from a defense standpoint. In my mind if a product has foreign decencies in it’s supply chain then it is not a product of the US alone. A reasonable exception for manufacturing equipment or IP owned by a foreign company.
So if everything in your car came from the US, except for a platinum ingot that provides the platinum in the catalytic converter, it is improper to claim that the car was made in the US? Note that the US is not a major producer of platinum.
Yes. It's really not hard to understand. At the very least it should say Made in America *except the catalytic converter