Senator Clinton calls for immediate implementation of COOL

Food & Drink Weekly, July 30, 2007

Recent scares about the safety of imported food and feed products have focused intense attention on the government's food safety systems, which some take to include country-of-origin labeling requirements. Presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) is among those calling on Congress to take steps to implement COOL as the earliest possible time. The 2002 farm bill mandated a COOL system, but to date the program has only been put in place for seafood.

"The recent scares about food and feed products from overseas make country-of-origin labels more important than ever," said Clinton. "Congress mandated that we impose COOL over five years ago. It is about time we had a system in place that allows consumers to know exactly where their food and produce is coming from and helps our local farmers promote their own home-grown products," she added.

USDA's FY08 spending measures approved last week by the House and Senate Appropriations committees include specific benchmarks for COOL that sponsors say are aimed at ending delays and ensuring that COOL is implemented by a Sept. 30, 2008 deadline.

Under the House version, USDA would re-propose a COOL rule for covered commodities by Jan. 17, 2008; set and publish final rule for all covered commodities by July 26, 2008; and initiate congressional review for a final rule for all covered commodities and make a final rule effective Sept. 30, 2008.

The benchmarks required under the Senate amendment would direct USDA to issue proposed regulations necessary to implement COOL by Jan. 18, 2008, and would require final rules to implement the labeling to be published by July 27, 2008.

The proposed farm bill that has been approved by the House Agriculture Committee and will move to the House floor this week also contains COOL language that could result in the labeling regime finally being implemented. The provision would require meat and meat products to carry one of four country-of-origin labels: 1) Product of the United States for meat products derived from animals born, raised and slaughtered in the United States; 2) mixed origin meat for products derived from animals that are not exclusively born, raised, and slaughtered in the United States (such products could be "Product of the United States and [Country X and/or Y]".); 3) meat commodities from foreign countries ("Product of [Country]"); and 4) live animals imported for direct slaughter.

There also would be a new country-of-origin label for ground meat. According to the proposal, such meat may be labeled with a list of countries from which the product was or may have been derived. For the label may include the phrase "May contain meat from" followed by a list of applicable countries.