Court affirms imported beef still allowed to be labeled "Product of USA"

https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2022/03/product-of-u-s-a-or-not-system-doesnt-bother-denvers-10th-circuit-court/

by maxwell • 4 years ago

196 137 4 years ago

zalebz• 4 years ago

this is a 2-1 state court appeal where the dissenting judge was the senior judge that cited potential state vs federal issues. my take is this is far from any sort of definitive decision.

o-o-• 4 years ago

Lobbying at its finest – an open form of corruption. The system needs an institution controlling these "interest groups". A force that can weigh the millions of dollars they spend to sway decision makers' opinions against "the greater good" (which often turns out to be public health).

The same goes for the unneccessarily prolonged fight against tobacco companies and junk food in schools.

alexfromapex• 4 years ago

Calling food that is 90%+ made in another country a "Product of the USA" is just insulting and I think if there was no money involved in the judges' decision making they'd just call this what it is; deceptive trade practices.

notJim• 4 years ago

The judge is likely interpreting a law that is worded to result in exactly this outcome.

new_stranger• 4 years ago

Unfortunately, whatever body you create to watch the body you create that watches the body you create will have people in it that will be the target of lobbing.

You need to some how break through the selection process to appoint people of integrity and put enough safeguards in place to prevent conflicts of interest.

Unfortunately, I don't know of a single time this design worked out in the past and created a working entity.

Corruption is the standard because it's the easiest path. This is true in other arenas like plaintext vs all the work of adding encryption or screen time vs exercising.

All the laws in the world won't fix a mindset or mental attitude.

jcranberry2• 4 years ago

The cases were dismissed. The court basically said this is something for USDA/Congress to take care of.

denton-scratch• 4 years ago

How's that "lobbying"? Isn't that just Big Meat paying for lawyers and winning a court-case? (Along with a brain-dead judge)

MikePlacid• 4 years ago

How's that "lobbying"?

From the court’s decision:

<<But this new law generated several years of international-trade issues with Canada and Mexico, including two disputes before the World Trade Organization and more than $1 billion in retaliatory tariffs imposed against the United States. … … As a result, in 2015, Congress repealed the new country-of-origin requirements for beef products, essentially reinstating the pre-2008 status quo.>>

The court just used this “status quo” law formulas. But it’s not the result of just lobbying, right. It’s the result of a trade war.

version_five3• 4 years ago

tobacco companies and junk food in schools

Bear with me, I think these are actually two examples of net good (potentially) done by lobbyists, where their (admittedly uncaring) business incentives end up standing up for what people want.

Tobacco and junk food are big targets for the "protect us from ourselves" crowd who think they should dictate values to other people. Just because they aren't good for you, government shouldn't be telling people what to do. Luckily (and I mean this, it's essentially a coincidence) the incentives of tobacco companies and soft drink manufacturers or whatever align with giving people what they want, so ordinary people who would otherwise get pushed around by controlling political types (for their own good) get an unexpected ally.

I've seen this with covid too, few stand up for people who just want to do their own thing and not get pushed around by people who want to impose their values of maximizing for health (pretending to) at the expense of all else. The only groups with the clout to stand up to health officials mad with power end up being lobbyists for companies that are losing money hand over fist, and the interests align.

I'm not saying it's utopian, but for better or worse, they end up providing a much needed countervailing force against what might otherwise be a march to some technocratic hell hole where people can't make their own choices because someone knows better.

brimble• 4 years ago

Tobacco and junk food are big targets for the "protect us from ourselves" crowd who think they should dictate values to other people. Just because they aren't good for you, government shouldn't be telling people what to do

Schools should absofuckinglutely not be serving, nor even making available, junk food to kids on any kind of regular basis. This isn't the government raiding your cupboards and throwing out things they don't like.

jawarner3• 4 years ago

In a lot of cases, the relationship between a product and a consumer is abusive. Take heroin for example. There is a huge (black) market for heroin. People "want" it, and will become addicted to it, and "want" it even more. The monetary value of a product is not a measure of how much good it does.

cptskippy• 4 years ago

The problem problem with your argument is that you're saying it's perfectly ok for businesses to manipulate their products to make them addictive, the public with marketing, the schools with kickbacks, and the politicians with lobbyists.

But when big government rears it's ugly head and tries to do any sort of regulation for the greater good, it's automatically bad and imposing on my freedoms and choice.

You're advocating for a world where people have the perception of freedom while being oblivious to the fact that they're actually being manipulated for profit. But that's ok as long as it's Facebook, Coke, Philip Morris and Nestle and not big bad government.

mmarq4• 4 years ago

Tobacco and junk food are big targets for the "protect us from ourselves" crowd who think they should dictate values to other people.

It is insane that a minor is allowed to buy or consume junk food in an institution (a school) that’s supposed to look after them. Food served in schools should be selected by a professional, such as a dietician. It should not be possible for a child to eat hamburgers or jacket potatoes or fries, first of all because we should not poison them and second because part of their education should include teaching them how to eat properly.

sdanvjsndks• 4 years ago

I do not think things are as black and white as you think and its a blurry line, there are so many other factors to consider than just "government shouldn't tell me what to do" - such as how addictive the substance is, what demography of the people is the regulation going to target e.g. children etc. If you ask me if a person should be able to choose if they want to smoke, I'd say yes; and if you ask me if there should be regulation around marketing tobacco products targeting kids or if there should be regulation to prevent selling/consuming cigarettes in schools/colleges or in public transport, I would also say yes. Different people draw the line differently, with what products should be regulated and how stringent should the regulation be, and we keep trying to find the best compromise and not deal with absolutes.

The problem I have with these groups/people that "end up standing up for what people want" as you phrase it, is that while such groups generally stand up for the causes they like its also generally the same people that also carve out their own list of exceptions that they think the government should intervene on. So, in essence, what's the difference between them and the "protect us from ourselves" crowd as you phrase it.

jawarner3• 4 years ago

Agreed. I call these "Lorax problems" when there's nobody there to speak for the common interest. It generally takes a drastic public spectacle to muster the political wherewithal to make a law in these cases. It took DDT killing bald eagles for the feds to make the EPA and the Clean Water and Clean Air acts. It took an oil spill to hold oil, inc. accountable for (a fraction of) their pollution.

mmarq4• 4 years ago

I’m not familiar with American labelling, but in the EU there are several labels that mean different things.

I’m not an expert, but roughly speaking PDO (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_designation_of_ori...) means that the entire process follows certain procedures, ingredients come from a particular area and production happens in certain areas (usually the same as the ingredients).

PGI (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_Geographical_Indic...) instead is looser.

For instance you may have PGI Tuscan oil that is produced with North African olives, while Lametia DOP (a PDO oil) must be produced near Lametia Terme and must use Carolea olives from the same area.

You can’t label your oil “Lametia DOP”, if you produce it near Milan or if you use different olives.

All this to say that for “product of USA” to make sense, it should not necessarily mean that in order to get that label all ingredients must come from the USA. You probably miss a PDO-like certification.

henrikschroder• 4 years ago

The EU just has so much more and better regulations on food labelling than the US.

Also, for meat, origin labelling is mandatory, but you usually see all three: "raised in", "butchered in", packaged in". If I understand the case in the article correctly, they're saying that if any of those three countries is the US, you can slap a "Product of the USA" on it and be done with it, which just wouldn't fly in the EU.

supernova87a• 4 years ago

"Beef, designed in California"

jgwil2• 4 years ago

I got some chrysanthemums as a gift last fall that came in a plastic, jack-o-lantern shaped pot. The text on the bottom read, "Made in China. Designed in USA."

jcranberry2• 4 years ago

More information:

https://www.natlawreview.com/article/10th-circuit-confirmed-...

blakesterz• 4 years ago

The actual ruling is here:

https://www.ca10.uscourts.gov/sites/ca10/files/opinions/0101...

The dissent starts on page 22 of that PDF, it's an interesting read.

"The text, history, and purpose of the FMIA all point toward the same conclusion: Congress could not have intended to authorize outright deception in meat labeling. Plaintiffs invoke state law to challenge precisely this sort of label, alleging that defendants mislead consumers about the origin of their beef products."

hericium• 4 years ago

In the US, Tic-Tac has zero calories. The same Tic-Tac is advertised in the EU as having "2 calories".

If a pack full of candy, 0.5g (edit) sugar each, can be sold as zero-kcal candy, then what's the fuss with meat labelling? Not lobbied enough?

soco• 4 years ago

You have a point but it's 0.5g each candy so they're in the area of rounding errors. And as every programmer knows just one rounding error won't bite you, but when (often) it gets multiplied...

mprovost• 4 years ago

The EU probably requires calculating energy in kilojoules (which are 4x calories) and then converting back to calories which results in different rounding.

bobro• 4 years ago

The idea that doing something wrong in one arena means we are justified to do something else wrong in another arena is incredibly self-sabotaging.

bamboozled• 4 years ago

Will no longer buy American beef, thanks.

It’s amazing how badly this affects the credibility of the USA.

Victerius• 4 years ago

Are "Product of USA"-labeled products entitled to beneficial tax treatment or subsidies? Because it would make sense for a business to attempt to minimize its production costs by outsourcing to cheaper foreign sources while reaping fiscal benefits at home.

anamax2• 4 years ago

Are "Product of USA"-labeled products entitled to beneficial tax treatment or subsidies?

The presence/absence of "Product of the USA" label affects some people's buying decisions.

bluGill3• 4 years ago

Not very many. Consumers mostly go to the store and grab whatever. Very few even read the label.

ldoughty3• 4 years ago

I sympathize with US ranchers, but I agree with the courts that "Product of the USA" okay...

M-COOL (Meat Country of Origin Label) is the right solution... and let me give an example why:

If I buy a new, real wood, kitchen table, that was imported as a sapling, planted in the USA for 20 years, then milled in the USA, then worked into a table by USA craftsmen -- would that be a product of the USA? I'd say so, and I think few people would argue that the "birth" of the tree on foreign soil taints its "Product of the USA" qualities in this sense.

If you agree with me there, then what we will end up disagreeing on is when that threshold is crossed, and it's no longer "Product of the USA".

By attacking this label, it was always an uphill battle, I think.... and that's why M-COOL is the better solution. Tell me where the meat was born, raised, and slaughtered. If a soup company imports that beef and uses it in their soup that is mixed, seasoned, and canned in the USA, I don't think it's fair to say they are not a USA product, however, it's still valid and good (I think) to say that it's from imported meats.

Retric4• 4 years ago

I disagree that your first example would qualify as a product of the USA. At least from a defense standpoint.

In my mind if a product has foreign decencies in it’s supply chain then it is not a product of the US alone. A reasonable exception for manufacturing equipment or IP owned by a foreign company.

machinerychorus• 4 years ago

Right, and the fact that you disagree is why M-COOL seems like a good solution: put all the relevant info on the label, and let each person choose where they draw the line.

jcranmer2• 4 years ago

So if everything in your car came from the US, except for a platinum ingot that provides the platinum in the catalytic converter, it is improper to claim that the car was made in the US? Note that the US is not a major producer of platinum.

ldoughty3• 4 years ago

If "Product of the USA" means 100% US Supply chain, then I would further argue that almost nothing COULD be a product of the USA...

If we can't include a copper heatsink because it was imported to the USA as raw copper ore... then can we even include foreign workers who come to the USA to work ? They may go home at any time... or they might be forced to go home... they might not even be authorized to work in the USA, or not let back into the USA (even if they were otherwise allowed to work) next season...

Again, we're arguing over where to draw the line, and that's why I dislike "Product of the USA" as a mechanism for meat labeling... everyone wants to draw the line somewhere differently, so it would be better to be more specific about labeling aspects of it, not the whole.

drdaeman• 4 years ago

Tell me where the meat was born, raised, and slaughtered.

This! Can't agree more. In modern economies, something might be a product of few dozen countries (beef born there, raised here, slaughtered somewhere else, beans from that place and pepper imported from another, there's a can and paper label design and printing too, and of course a labor to make those into the final product - which might be distributed), so trying to argue about things as having single country of origin is just wrong and archaic.

joelfried• 4 years ago

I appreciate why it feels archaic writ large, but for folks who want to know the animals in question were raised in a certain way (free of antibiotics, to pick something clear), I for one feel more confident that the label is being honest if the meat was also raised here.

thesimon• 4 years ago

beef born there, raised here, slaughtered somewhere else

Not rare to see here in Germany. I have seen it for Austrian-grown chicken to be slaughtered in Germany, similarly Argentinian beef is sometimes cut in the Netherlands.

EU regulation stipulates:

The term ‘origin’ should be reserved for meat obtained from animals born, reared and slaughtered, and therefore wholly obtained, in one single Member State or third country.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=15906711...)

UK law requires country of birth, country of rearing, country of slaughter and country of cutting to be on the product.

Slightly surprising that US consumers don't get so much information.

batch123• 4 years ago

Sure. I can get onboard with that. In this case, the company should not claim that the beef is a product of a single country. The issue I think is that sellers realize that people don't always want food shipped from halfway around the world-- so they obfuscate.

have_faith• 4 years ago

If a soup company imports that beef and uses it in their soup that is mixed, seasoned, and canned in the USA, I don't think it's fair to say they are not a USA product

I think it's very misleading if they're selling beef soup with an american flag on the front. Either way our disagreement just highlights the importance of the meat country of origin label.

smileysteve• 4 years ago

I agree, I was in a grocery store and at the frozen meat aisle. The import company has a USA flag, is called something like "American Product Imports" and the Tilapia is of Chinese origin if you look at the back.

I'm not sure which it says more about, the ethics of the company or how easily the American consumer is swayed by flag imagery.

rmbyrro• 4 years ago

Yea, they should move away from "Product of USA" and start using "Controlled Origin Denomination", like European wine producers use.

Alex3917• 4 years ago

If you import a sapling from overseas then there's a good chance the government will come to your house, seize and destroy it, and put you in prison. They run sting operations on eBay and similar sites all the time. Why shouldn't the same apply here?

sethammons2• 4 years ago

while this may or may not be true, and it is beside the point. We are talking about where to draw the line in the sand for "made somewhere" not if it is/isn't legal to have been made.

pdonis• 4 years ago

imported as a sapling, planted in the USA for 20 years, then milled in the USA, then worked into a table by USA craftsmen

But that's not a good analogy to what is being complained of in this case. What is being complained of in this case would be more analogous to a tree that was raised from sapling on in a foreign country, cut down, milled, and worked into pieces of a table in that foreign country, then a US company imported the pieces of the table, assembled them into a table, and labeled it "Product of the USA". Still ok to you?

stickfigure• 4 years ago

Parent's point is that it's a spectrum. What if the log was imported but it was milled and worked into a table in the US? What if it came in as milled lumber but was cut+worked into a table in the US? "Made in the USA" is fuzzy.

Huber banjos are "hand crafted in Tennessee" but the mahogany sure didn't grow there (or anywhere else in the USA).

mc32• 4 years ago

Sounds like “assembled in… from foreign components” or in this case “butchered in… from foreign cattle”

istjohn3• 4 years ago

That there isn't an obvious place to draw the line does not in any way justify drawing the line at a patently absurd position like this court has done. Courts constantly make rulings on issues where the boundaries are somewhat blurry. For just one example, take the infamous line about pornography: "I know it when I see it." They have well-established techniques for reasoning about such cases. It's not perfect, but it can be, and is, done all the time.

This case isn't about canned soup. It's about meat that has been minimally processed, e.g., a side of beef that gets cut into steaks and ribs in the USA. Calling that a "Product of the USA" is absurd. M-COOL sounds great, but this is still stupid.

reginaldo2• 4 years ago

Courts constantly make rulings on issues where the boundaries are somewhat blurry.

Do you consider that to be a good thing, though? Or, at least, a net good?

My own initial intuition was that it's not OK to add "Product of the USA" to the label if the intention is to mislead the consumer, but there may be other things at play that determine what must or must not be on the label, e.g. tax-related considerations, which, if you ask me, are also frequently arbitrary.

Also, keep in mind that a label with a full history might create information pollution, like with CA Prop 65 labels.

babyshake• 4 years ago

The easy solution is to allow for something like "Prepared in the USA", and only allowing "Product of the USA" if the animal was slaughtered in the US.

jka• 4 years ago

For outsiders, it's visible as an unintentional reverse-judgement by a jurisdiction upon itself.

Each legal realm is free to interpret their own language in their own terms, and they do so on an ongoing basis.

kevin_thibedeau• 4 years ago

I agree with the courts that "Product of the USA" okay...

It's okay to import an animal, put them on a feed lot for a few days, then move them over to the slaughter house and claim "raised in the US"?

moate2• 4 years ago

No, you changed words there sir. "Product of the USA" =/= "Raised in the USA". I don't believe you would find a "Raised in the USA" label on any meat, but it's been over a decade since I took a meat & seafood class, so I may be mistaken.

The point is, "Product of..." is essentially meaningless without added context. If I buy a McDonalds Hamburger, cooked by someone in my hometown in New Jersey, is that a "Product of New Jersey"? Sure! But also no, if the meat was ground in New York, from a cow slaughtered in Vermont but born and raised in Alberta Canada.

Short, pithy slogans are great to get people to think/feel things, but they're absolutely useless to actually explain anything. Look at how long my post is when I could have just said "You cheated!".

ldoughty3• 4 years ago

"raised in the US" in this sense has the same problem as "Product of the USA"..

Both are generic spectrums... "Product of the USA" is vastly more generic then "Raised in the USA"... you couldn't possibly make "Product of the USA" a common-folk-understandable term that means what most people think it means, because the spectrum is too large.... Does it mean the chicken was born in the USA, fed only seed found in the USA, which was grown in the USA, collected by a US business/individual (with no foreign labor or equipment)... etc.... By the end, no car could ever be a product of the USA because every engine or battery needs a component or element that is often imported.

"Raised in the USA" could be meaningfully quantified in a way people can understand... for instance: "spent the last 51% of its life in the USA prior to slaughter", or to support export: "Spend the last 51% of its life in the USA, prior to being sent to slaughter, not to exceed 7 days outside the USA"

Of course, people will bicker over the 51%... I don't like that either, but it's a "simplification" of the issue to a slogan, which is what all of this is really about anyways, if we don't provide quantifiable and factual statements like M-COOL partly provies (it's still ambiguous itself on the "raised" part, I think... though I've not read the full details)

jsonne• 4 years ago

The crazy thing is they actually 100% hold this data. Literally adding a few lines to the tag would solve this. I worked in a meat packing plant during summers in college and they would use rfid tags to scan everything in and out. The whole supply chain including down to which truck it was specifically transported on is there.

reginaldo2• 4 years ago

For cattle, yes, but how far do you go? Imagine trying to tag Milton Friedman's pencil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67tHtpac5ws

cbsmith• 4 years ago

Yes, what we need are more food labels. That way it'll be less confusing for customers.

batch123• 4 years ago

This seems all about removing the capacity for a consumer to make an informed choice between products. The label 'Product of USA' should have an unambiguous meaning-- especially for food.

metadat• 4 years ago

100% agree, it "should" have an unambiguous meaning, and in the ideal world it would.

The reality is, it's highly political. This typically results in somewhat-to-very perverse decision logic at high legalisative levels..

The M-COOL approach will sidestep some of the nonsense.

nickff• 4 years ago

"The label 'Product of USA' should have an unambiguous meaning..."

And what should that meaning be? I don't understand where you think the line should be.

Dracophoenix• 4 years ago

Why not just follow current immigration policy (jus soli births)?

twelvechairs• 4 years ago

Australia has a better system on all products 'Made in Australia from at least 98% Australian ingredients' or similar. Meat is treated the same as vegetables, nuts, milk, cereal etc.

https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/groceries/country-of-origi...

KennyBlanken2• 4 years ago

I lol'd at this:

Cattlemen believe it also helps create a level playing field for American ranchers by assisting them to get a fair price.

This is the industry that has fought to make it illegal to publish video from within slaughterhouses, and for regulations that require packages be labeled with disclaimers that imply organic and hormone-free meat and dairy are meaningless.

talideon3• 4 years ago

Here in Europe, you're told everything, not just where it was finally processed/packaged. Produce is labelled not just down to a country level, but to individual farms, and often you'll see meat for sale in shops include not just the code for the farm, but the full name too.

If I were to show you the jar of (blended) honey I have in my cupboard, it lists every country it came from. I haven't looked at any soup I have (granularity with stuff like that is more important when it comes down to food standards in individual blocs), but anything with differing food standards would likely be marked as such. Anything that's a mixed source of raw product has to be labelled as such, such as "Made in Ireland from a blend of EU and non-EU sources".

One of the good things about the EU, though I'm sure some in a particular ex-EU country might debate this, is that any food imports are required to be of the same standard as anything produced within the bloc.

Regarding the term "product of the USA", I think the problem there is down to phrasing: the table is a "product of the USA" if the work done in the US to transform it from the raw material to a table is done in the US. Maybe the solution is to do the same thing as is done in Europe, and have something like "Product of the USA from US and non-US raw materials".

[And if you want complicated, try being somebody working in Northern Ireland right now! Though it's a mixed, mostly positive, blessing for them: they can operate under "made in the UK" (good domestically, less so abroad mostly), or "made in Ireland" (so long as they're sticking to EU rules, and NI is so dependent on agriculture that it's to their benefit, as with tourism, to export under an all-Ireland umbrella), but it makes the paperwork... fun.]

mac01021• 4 years ago

Produce is labelled not just down to a country level, but to individual farms, and often you'll see meat for sale in shops include not just the code for the farm, but the full name too.

Is this true across all of Europe? If not, what country are you in?

anm89• 4 years ago

The article goes out of it's way to address this argument.

The cattle could have born, died, and primarily been butchered in another country as long as any amount of processing was done in the US.

This would be like if a tree was grown and and harvested in China, turned into a table in china, sent to the US, then a logo was stenciled in a corner in the US and then US was listed as the country of origin for the table when in fact every meaningful step of it's production occurred somewhere else.

stjohnswarts2• 4 years ago

I don't care about corporate rights I care about consumer rights. If it says Made in the USA, especially food stuffs, it should never have left the country for any purpose, I might make an exception for Canada, but only because they have as good or better standards as the USA. I don't trust Mexico or the Chinese FDA equivalents, given the sheer amount of corruption in those countries. I hope this lousy decision is appealed as high as it needs to go.

derbOac• 4 years ago

I have to admit that my intuition is food should be 100% within region to use a "made in" label, in a way that other products might not, although I'm not sure if I can explain it.

Other things I think there's more of an expectation of durable component retransportation or even reuse or recycling at the extreme, and not the same issues of direct bodily safety. You could also make the argument that increased transportation and processing per se, regardless of where, would all other things being equal, increase safety risks.

This is all vague in my head though.

Seems like there should be more labels like "made in X of imported materials" or "mixed origin" or even spelling out what was done where.

quitit• 4 years ago

The problem of a binary yes/no label is not uncommon. Other countries have approached this problem with a scale system (a simple bar from 0% to 100%), this way a consumer can easily compare like-for-like in product categories.

This is paired with a set of rules which apply to each category which undo typical efforts made to make a product appear more local.

In the case of a livestock/grown product that is partially raised overseas, that instead lands on a scale.

chrisbrandow• 4 years ago

The answer to the question, "does a consumer think that beef with a USA label might have come from another country?" is obviously "No"

But there is a certain type of Lawyer-brain legalism that has infected our courts, and I don't know of a good solution. But you get this kind of obvious perverse result where it just defies common sense. In that sense, I can understand how lawyers and judges looked at whatever laws that define what each part of a "product", "of", "USA" means and concluded, that yes, imported beef can technically be "Product of USA"

I'm so sick of this.

JasonFruit• 4 years ago

"Lawyer-brain legalism" describes the right way to interpret law, though. The way to fix it isn't to be flexible about the law, but to write better law.

Teever• 4 years ago

That's some Lawyer-brain legalism thinking right there bro.

People with Lawyber-brained legalism on the brain are the ones who write those poorly written laws.

“Don't struggle–only within the ground rules that the people you're struggling against have laid down.”

sethammons2• 4 years ago

I wish there was a better mechanism for intent vs letter of the law. Activist judges can be a real problem, but so can "oh, yeah, but this comma was in the wrong spot, so we are legal!".

elliekelly• 4 years ago

I disagree. My experience is limited to regulators, not judges, but Europe tends to be much more focused on the spirit of the law compared to America's focus on the letter of the law. The law can (and should!) be flexible. Legislation cannot possibly conceive of every possible fact pattern that might emerge. It's an unrealistic expectation and it would be a waste of effort to try to draft laws that way because they’d either be so specific they'd never apply or they'd be so broadly vague that they'd apply to everyone.

dataflow• 4 years ago

"Lawyer-brain legalism" describes the right way to interpret law, though. The way to fix it isn't to be flexible about the law, but to write better law.

This isn't 1 person writing 1 law who gets to iterate on it until the bugs are gone. Bandwidth is not exactly abundant here.

Before suggesting lawmakers somehow have enough bandwidth to improve every law into perpetuity, I feel like it might be an interesting experiment to try writing software the way law is written (through democratic voting on "amendments" to the codebase, with filibuster and all that fun, with similarly limited ways to kick people out of the group), and to then observe how many times you can feasibly go back to the drawing board to remove bugs and "write better code". And then calculate how much bandwidth you would need if you wanted to produce N products every year, instead of just 1.

jeltz2• 4 years ago

In my country, Sweden, this is much less of a problem since we put more emphasis on the spirit of the law which reduces the amount of lawyer-brain legalism. I think the US also should move more towards spirit of the law over letter of the law.

gojomo• 4 years ago

Life imitates art – specifically the Las Vegas-based surreal pseudo-mega-market "Omega Mart", which offers "Americanized Beef" in red, white, & blue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROOGLYvQdDs

floor2• 4 years ago

There's good news though if anyone reading this is concerned that it means they might be getting beef from Mexico that was raised in unsanitary conditions, with dangerous drugs, unhealthy diets and while exploiting low paid workers in terrible working conditions, which is that all of that is equally true of American beef, so there's really no difference.

JoeAltmaier3• 4 years ago

The meat is not really at issue. Neither is the label.

It's the need for folks to buy something with a nationalistic label, where the problem begins.

andruc• 4 years ago

If the standards and regulations that goverend the raising and production of meat were the same across all nations, then I'd agree that the decision would be a purely nationalistic one.

istjohn3• 4 years ago

When Brazil is burning down rainforests to raise cattle, there are good reasons to care where your beef is coming from.

cwkoss• 4 years ago

There are many environmental and other moral reasons to prefer more-local food (and other products)

jgod• 4 years ago

What's wrong with preferring your nation (language, culture, geography - doesn't necessarily map 1:1 to countries) over others, while living in your nation?

I'd be more worried about people who place other nations above mine while living in mine.

caseysoftware• 4 years ago

I'm thinking of this from a product recall point of view.

If some sort of pathogen or other issue is discovered in CountryX, you would probably think "whew, not my problem. I only buy beef from the US" and ignore everything else about it.

Feels like it's setting up a bad situation but hopefully they have mitigation approaches.

dqpb• 4 years ago

Three words are not enough to convey the biography of a cow.

instagraham• 4 years ago

"M-COOL"

Seeing these, I always wonder which came first--The phrase or the abbreviation?

kuang_eleven• 4 years ago

That seems like a reasonable ruling.

For any product, if there is a substantive processing step done (other than basic packaging), I would consider the label to be accurate.

Additionally, mandatory COOL seems like a self-serving overreach by the cattle industry. By all means, include optional labeling specifying the country of origin, following whatever (non-fraudulent) criteria you want, and that label can be protected all you want, but don't make it mandatory.

Shades of the equally ridiculous mandatory GMO labeling that thankfully got nixed.

lnanek2• 4 years ago

Not super interested in GMO or not myself, but knowing where beef comes from seems important. Outbreaks of mad cow disease tend to be confined to certain countries, so it's valuable to be able to know your meat isn't coming from one of those if you don't want to get a prion disease.

Meanwhile it's valuable for corporations to hide where the meat comes from since such a country might sell their beef considerably cheaper to offload it despite the disease. So it's one of those cases where the corporate interests (profit) are against the individual interests (not getting a prion disease) and having government step in and mandate country of origin labeling would be valuable.

I think the US tends to be less strict about meat anyway, though. Our grocery stores still package beef in carbon monoxide to make it look red even though other countries have decided that makes the meat look misleadingly fresher than it really is, for example.

stjohnswarts2• 4 years ago

It's only reasonable for corporations. None of this is in the interest of the consumer.

Court affirms imported beef still allowed to be labeled "Product of USA"

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