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Court affirms imported beef still allowed to be labeled "Product of USA"

foodsafetynews.com

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Re: Court affirms imported beef still allowed to be labeled "Product of USA"

#61

Post by jsonne »

ldoughty wrote: post #16

I sympathize with US ranchers, but I agree with the courts that "Product of the USA" okay... M-COOL (Meat Country of Origin Label) is the right solution... and let me give an example why: If I buy a new, real wood, kitchen table, that was imported as a sapling, planted in the USA for 20 years, then milled in the USA, then worked into a table by USA craftsmen -- would that be a product of the USA? I'd say so, and I th…

The crazy thing is they actually 100% hold this data. Literally adding a few lines to the tag would solve this. I worked in a meat packing plant during summers in college and they would use rfid tags to scan everything in and out. The whole supply chain including down to which truck it was specifically transported on is there.

Re: Court affirms imported beef still allowed to be labeled "Product of USA"

#62

Post by Retric »

ldoughty wrote: post #51
Retric wrote: post #19

Earlier 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.

If "Product of the USA" means 100% US Supply chain, then I would further argue that almost nothing COULD be a product of the USA... If we can't include a copper heatsink because it was imported to the USA as raw copper ore... then can we even include foreign workers who come to the USA to work ? They may go home at any time... or they might be forced to go home... they might not even be authorized to work in the USA,…

I am drawing a line between what could still be manufactured if US borders closed today and what couldn’t. Rain comes from water outside the US borders but a war isn’t going to stop rain the way it might stop platinum imports.

Copper can be sourced inside the US, if you didn’t then you have a foreign dependency in your supply chain which is something the DoD actually cares about for obvious reasons.

Any other definition is just meaningless marketing crap like “The Best” which is legally meaningless.

Re: Court affirms imported beef still allowed to be labeled "Product of USA"

#64

Post by version_five »

cptskippy wrote: post #55
version_five wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The problem problem with your argument is that you're saying it's perfectly ok for businesses to manipulate their products to make them addictive, the public with marketing, the schools with kickbacks, and the politicians with lobbyists. But when big government rears it's ugly head and tries to do any sort of regulation for the greater good, it's automatically bad and imposing on my freedoms and choice. You're advoca…

I'm summarizing the status quo, in which there are governments and other advocacy groups as well. My point is not that those should go away, it's that under the current system, there are cases where lobbyists (or corporate interests generally) can provide pushback that prevents runaway regulation and nanny-state-ism. If there were just profit seeking companies, and no opposing forces, that could be bad too, and maybe cause the kind of things you're talking about.

Re: Court affirms imported beef still allowed to be labeled "Product of USA"

#65

Post by Retric »

jcranmer wrote: post #48
behringer wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. It's really not hard to understand. At the very least it should say Made in America *except the catalytic converter

But the catalytic converter itself was fabricated in the US; only the raw materials for the catalytic converter didn't. (I'm using platinum ingot since that's how I'm assuming you'd buy a lump of platinum metal. If this is not correct, substitute for whatever the thing is you'd actually buy from somebody like Rio Tinto. I'd have used the platinum ore directly, but my understanding is that it generally is produced as…

Which means if the US went to war with X, you can’t make cars. That’s a critical distinction when talking about defense contractors.

Re: Court affirms imported beef still allowed to be labeled "Product of USA"

#66

Post by version_five »

mmarq wrote: post #60
version_five wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It is insane that a minor is allowed to buy or consume junk food in an institution (a school) that’s supposed to look after them. Food served in schools should be selected by a professional, such as a dietician. It should not be possible for a child to eat hamburgers or jacket potato…

I can't tell if this is serious, you are calling it insane that a minor should be allowed to eat hamburgers and fries at school? If you are serious, I'd say this supports my argument that we need to counterbalance these extreme views, and that coincidentally, industry lobby ends up being on the other side, and helping normal people who think it's ok to enjoy a burger sometimes

Re: Court affirms imported beef still allowed to be labeled "Product of USA"

#67

Post by bobro »

hericium wrote: post #9

In 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?

The idea that doing something wrong in one arena means we are justified to do something else wrong in another arena is incredibly self-sabotaging.

Re: Court affirms imported beef still allowed to be labeled "Product of USA"

#68

Post by LegitShady »

thesimon wrote: post #57
drdaeman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tell me where the meat was born, raised, and slaughtered. This! Can't agree more. In modern economies, something might be a product of few dozen countries (beef born there, raised here, slaughtered somewhere else, beans from that place and pepper imported from another, there's a can and paper label design and printing too, and of course a labor to make those into the final product - which might be distributed), so…

>beef born there, raised here, slaughtered somewhere else Not rare to see here in Germany. I have seen it for Austrian-grown chicken to be slaughtered in Germany, similarly Argentinian beef is sometimes cut in the Netherlands. EU regulation stipulates: > The term ‘origin’ should be reserved for meat obtained from animals born, reared and slaughtered, and therefore wholly obtained, in one single Member State or third…

I think there are big quality control issues with shipping away cattle to other countries for slaughter as well. Your ability to control the final product is much reduced compared to when everything is regulated locally.

I remember reading about a company importing crab and fish from china that on analysis found out what they were receiving wasn’t necessarily what they ordered, and the Chinese themselves were officially importing the food from canada, but what was shipped out to customers wasn’t necessarily that just labelled as that.

Murky waters, hard to control compared to everything being domestic.

Re: Court affirms imported beef still allowed to be labeled "Product of USA"

#69

Post by mmarq »

o-o- wrote: post #3

Lobbying 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.

I’m not familiar with American labelling, but in the EU there are several labels that mean different things.

I’m not an expert, but roughly speaking PDO (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_designation_of_ori...) means that the entire process follows certain procedures, ingredients come from a particular area and production happens in certain areas (usually the same as the ingredients).

PGI (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_Geographical_Indic...) instead is looser.

For instance you may have PGI Tuscan oil that is produced with North African olives, while Lametia DOP (a PDO oil) must be produced near Lametia Terme and must use Carolea olives from the same area.

You can’t label your oil “Lametia DOP”, if you produce it near Milan or if you use different olives.

All this to say that for “product of USA” to make sense, it should not necessarily mean that in order to get that label all ingredients must come from the USA. You probably miss a PDO-like certification.

Re: Court affirms imported beef still allowed to be labeled "Product of USA"

#70

Post by Retric »

jerf wrote: post #43
jcranmer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you're arguing from the perspective that there's some objectively right "Product of the USA" meaning. But there isn't. A USA Apple Pie did not start by the USA creating the universe, paraphrasing Carl Sagan. The problem is that there are differing degrees of "Product of the USA" here. "Big Meat" wants to slap it on anything they want that vaguely touched the US at some point prior to packaging for marketing p…

False advertising still applies.

The only loophole is short descriptions by default have an ambiguous meaning. “Made with Oak” could mean you used an oak spoon at some stage in the process. So, it needs to be extremely egregious which this case wasn’t.

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