November 17, 2004

  • Where Does Your Food Come From? A move to repeal a law passed that would require mandatory labeling on where food comes from, including country of origin.  Of course, companies are balking.  But can someone, please, please, explain this.  I'm not dismissing it out of hand but



    Those who want the repeal say the labeling system is so expensive that it far outweighs any benefit to consumers. The Agriculture Department has estimated the cost could range from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars in the first year alone.


    Say what?? Is that the total cost for all manufacturers, that would be spread out far and wide? Notice it doesn't say how many manufacturers this would impact -- just the nebulous millions and millions number.  That's not good reporting.  That's giving a false sense of largeness.


    Moreover, why, exactly, would it cost a lot to change a label that they already must produce? The actual change doesn't seem like it would cost a lot.  But is this just another way of saying that packers don't really know where their food is really coming from and it would cost them too much to keep track of it? Hell, I thought they could track cows better than people.  In fact, I know they can.  But maybe not.

Comments (1)

  • Actually they currently lack the ability to track where produce comes from. Especially livestock like cattle. Scientific American reported earlier this year that most of the cattle that were part of the herd brought in from Canada that brought mad cow disease to the US would never be able to be tracked. These animals are brought in as groups, then divided up and sold to many different buyers who in turn group them with other animals. They are never really treated as individuals that can be tracked.

    Some efforts are being made to design a system, but it's still largely in the design and testing stage.

    I don't know exactly the issues involved with vegetables, I haven't researched that one. I suspect it might involve a bit more than labels. Even if it didn't, it's not just one label. It's a label on every container that carries it from the field to the supermarket. The final store label would be the most expensive. The average soup can label in the store can cost a minimum of $500 to just to redesign, even if all you are trying to do is fit in one more sentence. Changing plates for printing is even more.

    That being said, I agree that it would be a good idea and worth it, if it's feasable using current tracking systems. If they're mixing crops from multiple regions, (think soybeans), it might prove a bit more difficult.

    Then there's manpower for oversight of the project, how many people is it going to take to make this happen? How much will they have to be paid? What training will they need? Does anyone have an estimate even? How will you make sure that people aren't just slapping any old label on their food, or sending it through another country to get the desired label?

    At the same time as I say this, the technology to track individual shipping crates and flats is being developed via small tags that involve a computer chip and a transmitter to track inventories of goods for corporations like Walmart. They're expecting to have a functioning system (albiet with bugs to be worked out) in the next five years. Eventually if the technology could be made cheap enough, the hope is that individual packages could be tracked.

    So the desire to have the kind of country of origin tracking you speak of at a reasonable cost may be about ten years out or so.

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