Patriotism doesn’t come cheap.
That’s the message from the Agriculture Department, which estimates the cost of putting “produced in USA” stickers on vegetables and meat produced in the United States to be $2 billion, reports Scripps Howard News Service.
Of course, the federal agency didn’t support the effort in the first place.
Like it or not, the Farm Bill passed by Congress last year requires the department to launch voluntary country-of-origin labeling for meat and produce and then come up with mandatory labeling regulations by Sept. 30, 2004. Retailers who mislabel or otherwise fail to comply with the regulations face fines.
The bill exempts poultry and West Coast walnuts and almonds.
The exorbitant cost stems from the need for record keeping, contend officials with the department’s economic research service, who say 2 million farmers and fishermen will need to keep paperwork to prove their animals were born, raised and slaughtered in the United States, or fish were caught in U.S. waters. The paperwork will include birth certificates, purchase records, sales receipts, feed bills and veterinary records.
Growers will be required to produce seed purchase records, records of pesticide applications, harvest records, shipping records and ledgers of their sales records to show their vegetables and fruits earned the labels.
The mandate, intended to spur patriotism among consumers at the grocery store, may just backfire.
Ernie Davis, a livestock marketing expert at Texas A&M University, told Scripps Howard a more realistic price tag of the mandatory labeling will be $9 billion, and warned that cost will be passed onto consumers.
“A lot of folks are not happy,” Bryan Dierlam, director of legislative affairs for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, told the news service.
While cattle producers like the idea, according to Dierlam, they don’t like the federal government’s involvement. He maintains an industry-run program would cost less and be just as effective.
