WASHINGTON – Telling consumers where their meat, fruit and vegetables came from seemed such a good idea to U.S. ranchers and farmers in competition with imports that Congress two years ago ordered the food industry to do it. But meatpackers and food processors fought the law from the start, and newly emboldened Republicans now plan to repeal it before Thanksgiving.
As part of the 2002 farm bill, country-of-origin labeling was supposed to have gone into effect this fall. Congress last year postponed it until 2006. Now, House Republicans are trying to wipe it off the books as part of a spending bill they plan to finish this month.
House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said he expected the Senate to agree to repealing the measure, whose main champion two years ago was Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.
“I can’t find any real opposition to doing exactly what we want to do here,” Blunt said.
President Bush never supported mandatory labeling. Chances for repealing the law improved when Daschle, still his party’s leader in the Senate, was defeated for re-election Nov. 2.
“For Republicans to deny Americans the opportunity to ‘buy American’ at the grocery store is anti-consumer, anti-farmer and anti-rancher,” Daschle said Wednesday.
He and other Western senators were making an effort to keep repeal of the labeling law out of the wide-ranging spending bill Congress plans to pass before it leaves. Democrats acknowledged there was not much of an appetite to wage a battle over it.
Those who want the repeal say the labeling system is so expensive that it far outweighs any benefit to consumers. The Agriculture Department has estimated the cost could range from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars in the first year alone.
Food processors and other opponents of mandatory labeling say they are amenable to voluntary labels.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
