COOL effectively killed

[Guest guest]

Fri, 28 Oct 2005 12:45:42 -0500 (CDT)

" Audrey Hill, Public Citizen " <ahill

COOL effectively killed

 

 

Note: The only silver lining is that the Larry Craig provision to

exempt factory farms from Superfund and Emergency Planning and

Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA) failed once again.

 

October 27, 2005

 

 

Politics and Money to Blame for Killing Consumer-Friendly Food

Labeling Program

 

Statement of Wenonah Hauter, Director of Public Citizen's Food Program

 

The long battle over country-of-origin labeling (COOL) has reached a

disappointing finish, with a decision last night by the House-Senate

Conference Committee on the agriculture appropriations bill (H.R.

2744) to wave a white flag of surrender to the food and grocery

industries. The committee effectively killed a mandatory program that

would require labels on foods sold in grocery stores to state where

and how the food was raised or produced.

 

As is typical of this Congress, this final move was made behind closed

doors. Even though Public Citizen tried to attend this so-called

public meeting, no one who was standing in line to attend the meeting

was allowed to enter the room. Despite polls showing that consumers

overwhelmingly support mandatory labeling, lawmakers have killed the

idea through budgetary gimmicks because they favor a weaker, voluntary

labeling program. A mandatory program would not have cost the

government any money; that cost would have been borne by the food

industry.

 

As outlined in the recent Public Citizen report Tabled Labels,

available at http://www.citizen.org/documents/COOL.pdf, big

agribusiness used millions of dollars in lobbying expenditures and

campaign contributions, and a network of Washington insiders with

close connections to the Bush administration and Congress, to thwart

COOL. This latest effort to kill COOL was led by U.S. Rep. Henry

Bonilla (R-Texas), who has received more than $167,000 from COOL

opponents in the past three election cycles, making him their top

beneficiary. The Food Marketing Institute, which represents the

grocery industry, and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, which

represents the meat industry, have been the biggest opponents of

mandatory COOL. It is apparent that our elected lawmakers' main

concern is to protect industry, not consumers.

 

While the appropriations bill delays mandatory COOL for meat to

September 2008, this move effectively kills the program because this

new implementation date is beyond the expiration date - 2007 - of the

2002 Farm Bill that originally mandated it.

 

Rules for voluntary COOL are already in effect, yet most consumers are

not getting information about where their food was produced. For

nearly four years, Congress has stalled on this issue. Most people can

earn a college degree in four years, but apparently it's not enough

time for Congress to institute a simple program that would have been

useful to every consumer in the United States. Congress has failed us

again.

###

Public Citizen is a national, nonprofit consumer advocacy organization

based in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit

www.citizen.org.

 

 

 

 

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