- WASHINGTON -- Telling consumers
where their meat, fruit and vegetables come from seemed such a good idea
to U.S. ranchers and farmers in competition with imports that Congress
two years ago ordered the food industry to do it. But meatpackers and food
processors fought the law from the start, and newly emboldened Republicans
now plan to repeal it before Thanksgiving.
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- As part of the 2002 farm bill, country-of-origin labeling
was supposed to have gone into effect this fall. Congress last year postponed
it until 2006. Now, House Republicans are trying to wipe it off the books
as part of a spending bill they plan to finish this month.
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- House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said he expected
the Senate to agree to repealing the measure, whose main champion two years
ago was Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.
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- "I can't find any real opposition to doing exactly
what we want to do here," Blunt said.
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- President Bush never supported mandatory labeling. Chances
for repealing the law improved when Daschle, still his party's leader in
the Senate, was defeated for re-election Nov. 2.
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- "For Republicans to deny Americans the opportunity
to 'buy American' at the grocery store is anti-consumer, anti-farmer and
anti-rancher," Daschle said Wednesday.
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- He and other Western senators were making an effort to
keep repeal of the labeling law out of the wide-ranging spending bill Congress
plans to pass before it leaves. Democrats acknowledged there was not much
of an appetite to wage a battle over it.
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- 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.
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- Food processors and other opponents of mandatory labeling
say they are amenable to voluntary labels.
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- http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/nation/10210198.htm
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- Comment
- From Charlene Fassa
- 11-20-4
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- Without country of origin labeling how will consumers
be able to make informed decisions about their food purchases? If there's
an outbreak of something or other in Indonesia, for example, how can I
avoid that contaminated product if I don't know where my food stuffs come
from? And if the contaminated food is ALREADY on the shelves of grocery
stores how can it be identified QUICKLY. Worse yet what if contaminated
produce shows up in restaurants, nationwide. How will food purveyors and
distributors be able to handle these types of situations before lots of
people get sick? I think the issue is beyond nationalism. Although it's
a factor.
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