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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"

#111

Post by [deleted] »

Retric wrote: post #62
ldoughty wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 definit…

[deleted]

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

#112

Post by jgod »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #31

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.

What's wrong with preferring your nation (language, culture, geography - doesn't necessarily map 1:1 to countries) over others, while living in your nation?

I'd be more worried about people who place other nations above mine while living in mine.

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

#113

Post by b_t_s »

reginaldo wrote: post #84
istjohn wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That there isn't an obvious place to draw the line does not in any way justify drawing the line at a patently absurd position like this court has done. Courts constantly make rulings on issues where the boundaries are somewhat blurry. For just one example, take the infamous line about pornography: "I know it when I see it." They have well-established techniques for reasoning about such cases. It's not perfect, but it…

> Courts constantly make rulings on issues where the boundaries are somewhat blurry. Do you consider that to be a good thing, though? Or, at least, a net good? My own initial intuition was that it's not OK to add "Product of the USA" to the label if the intention is to mislead the consumer, but there may be other things at play that determine what must or must not be on the label, e.g. tax-related considerations, whi…

I would consider that to be their primary job function. Especially at the higher levels. The rule of law would break down if they didn't. Laws are like product specs. They cover the core stuff as best they can, but there are invariably areas where they are a bit buggy, ambiguous, and incomplete. We already have problems with loopholes, but if judges weren't allowed to to exercise some degree of reasonable judgement when things are not 100% crystal clear those problems would be orders of magnitude worse.

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

#114

Post by HWR_14 »

reginaldo wrote: post #84
istjohn wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That there isn't an obvious place to draw the line does not in any way justify drawing the line at a patently absurd position like this court has done. Courts constantly make rulings on issues where the boundaries are somewhat blurry. For just one example, take the infamous line about pornography: "I know it when I see it." They have well-established techniques for reasoning about such cases. It's not perfect, but it…

> Courts constantly make rulings on issues where the boundaries are somewhat blurry. Do you consider that to be a good thing, though? Or, at least, a net good? My own initial intuition was that it's not OK to add "Product of the USA" to the label if the intention is to mislead the consumer, but there may be other things at play that determine what must or must not be on the label, e.g. tax-related considerations, whi…

> My own initial intuition was that it's not OK to add "Product of the USA" to the label if the intention is to mislead the consumer,

And who decides that? A lot of things have blurry lines and I don't know who you expect to clarify them. A court where two sides argue seems like the best solution to me. Not a great solution, but it falls into that quote about democracy being bad but still the best.

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

#115

Post by HWR_14 »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #88
LegitShady wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 officia…

A massive amount of seafood in the US is intentionally mislabeled, which leads to a lot of problems because tilapia, for example, causes upset stomachs for a lot of people.

A lot of seafood is mislabled because it's hard to identify. Especially given that there might be a few random fish in a catch that is predominantly X.

Meanwhile, tilapia is farmed. Hence misidentification there would be intentional.

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

#116

Post by fsckboy »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #91
KennyBlanken wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A massive amount of seafood in the US is intentionally mislabeled, which leads to a lot of problems because tilapia, for example, causes upset stomachs for a lot of people.

Not sure how that works. 'Tilapia' isn't a fish. Its 'any whitefish'

whitefish in the US seafood market traditionally refers to cod, haddock, pollack and similar species, even including sole, flounder and halibut.

tilapia are cichlids, and are not part of the old definition; not sure if the definition has changed

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

#117

Post by jeltz »

sethammons wrote: post #93
JasonFruit wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Lawyer-brain legalism" describes the right way to interpret law, though. The way to fix it isn't to be flexible about the law, but to write better law.

I wish there was a better mechanism for intent vs letter of the law. Activist judges can be a real problem, but so can "oh, yeah, but this comma was in the wrong spot, so we are legal!".

Activist judges do not seem to be more common in Europe where intent is generally more important. I do not think focusing on intent significantly enabled activist judges.

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

#118

Post by lnanek2 »

kuang_eleven wrote: post #100

That seems like a reasonable ruling. For any product, if there is a substantive processing step done (other than basic packaging), I would consider the label to be accurate. Additionally, mandatory COOL seems like a self-serving overreach by the cattle industry. By all means, include optional labeling specifying the country of origin, following whatever (non-fraudulent) criteria you want, and that label can be protec…

Not super interested in GMO or not myself, but knowing where beef comes from seems important. Outbreaks of mad cow disease tend to be confined to certain countries, so it's valuable to be able to know your meat isn't coming from one of those if you don't want to get a prion disease.

Meanwhile it's valuable for corporations to hide where the meat comes from since such a country might sell their beef considerably cheaper to offload it despite the disease. So it's one of those cases where the corporate interests (profit) are against the individual interests (not getting a prion disease) and having government step in and mandate country of origin labeling would be valuable.

I think the US tends to be less strict about meat anyway, though. Our grocery stores still package beef in carbon monoxide to make it look red even though other countries have decided that makes the meat look misleadingly fresher than it really is, for example.

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

#119

Post by moate »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #56
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…

> I agree with the courts that "Product of the USA" okay... It's okay to import an animal, put them on a feed lot for a few days, then move them over to the slaughter house and claim "raised in the US"?

No, you changed words there sir. "Product of the USA" =/= "Raised in the USA". I don't believe you would find a "Raised in the USA" label on any meat, but it's been over a decade since I took a meat & seafood class, so I may be mistaken.

The point is, "Product of..." is essentially meaningless without added context. If I buy a McDonalds Hamburger, cooked by someone in my hometown in New Jersey, is that a "Product of New Jersey"? Sure! But also no, if the meat was ground in New York, from a cow slaughtered in Vermont but born and raised in Alberta Canada.

Short, pithy slogans are great to get people to think/feel things, but they're absolutely useless to actually explain anything. Look at how long my post is when I could have just said "You cheated!".

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

#120

Post by moate »

bluGill wrote: post #85
anamax wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are "Product of USA"-labeled products entitled to beneficial tax treatment or subsidies? The presence/absence of "Product of the USA" label affects some people's buying decisions.

Not very many. Consumers mostly go to the store and grab whatever. Very few even read the label.

*Citation needed for every sentence in this post.
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