Farmers and More Against U.S. Beef Integrity Act
Friday, December 13th, 2019 -- 8:37 AM
(Wisconsin Ag Connection) -More than 50 farm, ranch, consumer, manufacturing, labor and other organizations sent a joint letter to U.S. Senators Mike Rounds and John Thune, both of South Dakota, urging them to amend their recently introduced U.S. Beef Integrity Act by including it "within a comprehensive mandatory country-of-origin labeling bill" for beef and pork.The Northern Wisconsin Beef Producers was among the co-signers of the memo. They say that it makes more sense to correct the problem with stand-alone legislation, rather than reinstating mandatory COOL in its entirety. The U.S. Beef Integrity Act is a voluntary measure that would reserve the U.S. label only for meat that is exclusively born, raised, and slaughtered in the United States.
The letter explains that the Act's attempt to correct just the one isolated problem in which foreign beef can be mislabeled as a "Product of USA" will have the unintended consequence of undercutting the broad-based groups' efforts to fully reinstate mandatory COOL for beef and pork.
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