Amid complaints that the labels are deceptive, the USDA will undertake a top-to-bottom review of the Product of USA labels that appear on packages of meat, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Thursday. In addition to identifying meat from animals raised in the United States, the label can currently be used on foreign meat that is processed in U.S. plants.
The USDA acknowledged last year that the voluntary label may confuse consumers. Vilsack said the review, expected to act as a preface to an upcoming rulemaking effort, will “help us to determine what the label means to consumers. … [W]e will be asking questions, collecting data, and requesting comments.” The USDA will also consult with our trading partners to make sure trade rules are followed, he said.
“I am committed to ensuring that the Product of USA label reflects what a plain understanding of those terms means to U.S. consumers,” said Vilsack.
The Consumer Federation of America, which advocates stricter label rules, said Vilsack had “stopped short of committing to any specific reform to the label standards, such as a requirement it only apply to meat from animals born, raised, and slaughtered in the United States.” Without that, said the consumer group, Americans “will still have to grapple with unscrupulous origin claims on beef and pork.”
“Americans deserve to know where their meat comes from,” said Rob Larew, president of the National Farmers Union. “We sincerely hope the agency will limit the claim to meat born, raised, slaughtered, and processed domestically, offering greater transparency to consumers and financial opportunities to American farmers and ranchers.” The NFU said the “wildly deceptive” Product of USA label can be applied to meat “that spent its entire life in another country.”
A federal judge who dismissed a lawsuit last year challenging the Product of USA label said that the USDA was the deciding authority on the label. In the view of current trade rules, a beef or pork carcass undergoes substantial transformation during processing, so the resulting cuts of meat qualify as U.S. products.
The debate over Product of USA labels echoes the arguments several years ago over mandatory country-of-origin labeling for beef and pork. The World Trade Organization ruled the U.S. regulation was a trade barrier in disguise to constrain trade with Canada and Mexico. Meatpackers and retailers said it would be an expensive bookkeeping exercise to track the origin of each package of meat.
The USDA announced its review of the Product of USA label on the same day the Federal Trade Commission voted, 3-2, to crack down on marketers who falsely claim their products are Made in USA, which means “all or virtually all” of the product was made in America. Under its new rule, the FTC can seek damages, penalties, and other relief against abuse of the Made in USA label, including civil penalties of up to $43,280 per violation.