Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

foodsafetynews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 146 posts

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

#121

Post by Turing_Machine »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #109
phonypc wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tilapia certainly does not refer to any whitefish. If tilapia is not "a fish" then neither are salmon or tuna or probably a dozen other common names.

Tilapia certainly does refer to (almost) any whitefish. Over 100 different fish are called 'tilapia'. Because their flesh is white, and they cannot pass as a more valuable fish. For comparison, there are 8 species of salmon. We eat maybe two of them.

> Over 100 different fish are called 'tilapia'

All of which are cichlids.

That's a long way away from "any whitefish".

"Whitefish" most commonly refers to cod and pollock, not tilapia.

And we eat every species of salmon, not just two.

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

#122

Post by phonypc »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #109
phonypc wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tilapia certainly does not refer to any whitefish. If tilapia is not "a fish" then neither are salmon or tuna or probably a dozen other common names.

Tilapia certainly does refer to (almost) any whitefish. Over 100 different fish are called 'tilapia'. Because their flesh is white, and they cannot pass as a more valuable fish. For comparison, there are 8 species of salmon. We eat maybe two of them.

Most of those 100 fish are not eaten at any great scale. If you ask someone for examples of whitefish, you're going to get answers like cod, haddock, pollock etc. None of which are tilapia. Tilapia arguably isn't even an example of whitefish.

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

#123

Post by dataflow »

JasonFruit wrote: post #29
chrisbrandow wrote: post #18

The answer to the question, "does a consumer think that beef with a USA label might have come from another country?" is obviously "No" But there is a certain type of Lawyer-brain legalism that has infected our courts, and I don't know of a good solution. But you get this kind of obvious perverse result where it just defies common sense. In that sense, I can understand how lawyers and judges looked at whatever laws th…

"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.

> "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.

This isn't 1 person writing 1 law who gets to iterate on it until the bugs are gone. Bandwidth is not exactly abundant here.

Before suggesting lawmakers somehow have enough bandwidth to improve every law into perpetuity, I feel like it might be an interesting experiment to try writing software the way law is written (through democratic voting on "amendments" to the codebase, with filibuster and all that fun, with similarly limited ways to kick people out of the group), and to then observe how many times you can feasibly go back to the drawing board to remove bugs and "write better code". And then calculate how much bandwidth you would need if you wanted to produce N products every year, instead of just 1.

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

#124

Post by istjohn »

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…

Yes, it's a good thing. Otherwise there would be a great number of things our elected representatives would want to execute in law on behalf of their constituencies that they would be unable to do so because the burden of legislating in sufficient detail would be too high.

In fact, there is a legal theory gaining traction in conservative circles that seeks to neuter the federal government by arguing that Congress cannot delegate law-making to the executive branch. They argue that Congress must lay out laws in full detail instead of expressing a general intent and creating executive institutions like the EPA, FTC, and FAA to then elaborate and administer detailed regulations. The effect would be to make our laws brittle and short-sighted.

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

#125

Post by smileysteve »

have_faith wrote: post #28
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…

> If a soup company imports that beef and uses it in their soup that is mixed, seasoned, and canned in the USA, I don't think it's fair to say they are not a USA product I think it's very misleading if they're selling beef soup with an american flag on the front. Either way our disagreement just highlights the importance of the meat country of origin label.

I agree, I was in a grocery store and at the frozen meat aisle. The import company has a USA flag, is called something like "American Product Imports" and the Tilapia is of Chinese origin if you look at the back.

I'm not sure which it says more about, the ethics of the company or how easily the American consumer is swayed by flag imagery.

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

#126

Post by jka »

istjohn wrote: post #53
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…

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…

For outsiders, it's visible as an unintentional reverse-judgement by a jurisdiction upon itself.

Each legal realm is free to interpret their own language in their own terms, and they do so on an ongoing basis.

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

#127

Post by Msw242 »

istjohn wrote: post #124
reginaldo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Yes, it's a good thing. Otherwise there would be a great number of things our elected representatives would want to execute in law on behalf of their constituencies that they would be unable to do so because the burden of legislating in sufficient detail would be too high. In fact, there is a legal theory gaining traction in conservative circles that seeks to neuter the federal government by arguing that Congress can…

The agencies are abusing the guidance and rule making processes in ways that are completely absurd.

When I worked in DC, I saw guidance that suggested criminal liability retroactively for selling some financial products.

Lots of petty dictators with no respect for the legislative process or limits of executive power.

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

#128

Post by anm89 »

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 article goes out of it's way to address this argument.

The cattle could have born, died, and primarily been butchered in another country as long as any amount of processing was done in the US.

This would be like if a tree was grown and and harvested in China, turned into a table in china, sent to the US, then a logo was stenciled in a corner in the US and then US was listed as the country of origin for the table when in fact every meaningful step of it's production occurred somewhere else.

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

#129

Post by armitron »

riffraff wrote: post #106
AniseAbyss wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an infamous example in the EU with "Parmaham". Take pigs from the Netherlands, put them in a truck and drive to Italy. Presto Italian ham.

Are you sure? As far as I remember Prosciutto di Parma has a proper disciplinary, the pigs must be bred in Italy, and not even all of it.

Prosciutto di Parma is very specific and not parmaham, which is a generic designation applied to all sorts of crappy ham and meant to trick those that don't know better.

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

#130

Post by LegitShady »

HWR_14 wrote: post #115
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.

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.

tilapia actually refers to a large group of fish from the cichlids group.
Post reply on HN