[HN Gopher] Court affirms imported beef still allowed to be labe...
___________________________________________________________________
Court affirms imported beef still allowed to be labeled "Product of
USA"
Author : maxwell
Score : 175 points
Date : 2022-03-18 16:44 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.foodsafetynews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.foodsafetynews.com)
| chrisbrandow wrote:
| 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.
| jeltz wrote:
| 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.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| "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.
| sethammons wrote:
| 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!".
| jeltz wrote:
| Activist judges do not seem to be more common in Europe
| where intent is generally more important. I do not think
| focusing on intent significantly enabled activist judges.
| elliekelly wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > "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.
| Teever wrote:
| 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."
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| cwkoss wrote:
| There are many environmental and other moral reasons to prefer
| more-local food (and other products)
| istjohn wrote:
| When Brazil is burning down rainforests to raise cattle, there
| are good reasons to care where your beef is coming from.
| jgod wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| zalebz wrote:
| 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.
| gojomo wrote:
| 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
| o-o- wrote:
| 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.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| jawarner wrote:
| 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.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The judge is likely interpreting a law that is worded to
| result in exactly this outcome.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Exactly. It's ridiculous to jump to the assumption that
| judges are being paid off when they correctly interpreted
| the law as written.
|
| The law needs to be changed, of course. But that's not up
| to the judges.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > But that's not up to the judges.
|
| Sure it is. English common law countries place heavy
| emphasis on precedent. If the judge had refused to take
| the law literally in this case and done the reasonable
| thing instead, chances are this precedent would be cited
| in any future lawsuits of this sort.
| mpalczewski wrote:
| 2 out of 3 judges are interpreting the law this way. This
| went all the way to an appeals court. There's a strong
| implication that there is quite a bit of room for the
| judges to maneuver.
|
| The minority opinion judge said > if consumers are deceived
| by the label, "Product of the U.S.A.," then that label
| violates both the FMIA and USDA regulations.
| new_stranger wrote:
| 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.
| jcranberry wrote:
| The cases were dismissed. The court basically said this is
| something for USDA/Congress to take care of.
| mmarq wrote:
| 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.wikip
| edia.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_Ind
| ic...) 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 wrote:
| 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.
| mmarq wrote:
| It would fly in the EU, if you branded your product
| accordingly. Maybe "Product of the USA" doesn't mean much
| legally. In the EU you can probably brand something as
| "Product of the EU", but you can't make wine in your
| basement and call it Prosecco, because "Prosecco" is a PDO
| wine/name and must be produced in Valdobbiadene and
| Conegliano using local grapes. Maybe somebody should
| register a brand and license it to producers that follow
| certain processes? Certainly there are private companies
| already doing that, but nobody cares.
|
| To be honest, these protected denominations favour the
| producers more than the consumer. If you think about it,
| from the consumer's perspective, it doesn't really make
| sense to prevent somebody in Florence from producing
| Prosecco, if they follow the correct procedures and use the
| correct grapes. The same applies for meat origin labelling,
| why should I care if my steak comes from the UK? I would
| understand Argentina... I find way more relevant knowing
| the breed rather than the country of origin (What's this?
| Angus? Chianina? https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-
| ui/product/steak/sainsburys...)
|
| But I digress.
| version_five wrote:
| > 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.
| mmarq wrote:
| > 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.
| version_five wrote:
| I can't tell if this is serious, you are calling it insane
| that a minor should be allowed to eat hamburgers and fries
| at school? If you are serious, I'd say this supports my
| argument that we need to counterbalance these extreme
| views, and that coincidentally, industry lobby ends up
| being on the other side, and helping normal people who
| think it's ok to enjoy a burger sometimes
| mmarq wrote:
| I'm dead serious, school menus in Italy are (at least in
| theory) monitored by the ministry of health, to ensure
| they are healthy and well balanced. Children don't buy
| food at school, they are served a meal from a fixed menu
| (which may change for religious or health reasons). I'll
| leave to you to determine which county has better eating
| habits.
|
| The notion that a 7 year old can buy fries or may think
| it's normal to buy fries (rather than it being an
| exceptional thing that happens no more than once a week
| under the supervision of an adult) is as stupid as
| thinking that they should be allowed to buy and consume
| beer.
| brimble wrote:
| > 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.
| [deleted]
| cptskippy wrote:
| 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.
| version_five wrote:
| I'm summarizing the status quo, in which there are
| governments and other advocacy groups as well. My point is
| not that those should go away, it's that under the current
| system, there are cases where lobbyists (or corporate
| interests generally) can provide pushback that prevents
| runaway regulation and nanny-state-ism. If there were just
| profit seeking companies, and no opposing forces, that
| could be bad too, and maybe cause the kind of things you're
| talking about.
| jawarner wrote:
| On any given issue, some people care more about it, and
| some people care less about it. Special groups in general
| are not a bad thing.
|
| > If there were just profit seeking companies, and no
| opposing forces, that could be bad too, and maybe cause
| the kind of things you're talking about.
|
| That's exactly what the problem is. On many issues, there
| are no opposing forces to the special interest groups.
| These arise when for example when an industry causes a
| small issue for a large population. It's difficult to
| organize and litigate in such cases.
|
| Edit: I think we're mostly in agreement. I think what is
| needed is, like GP suggested, a rational way to balance
| the incentives for the special interests and the public
| good. Our current system relies on mustering large public
| support to make legal changes for the public good, but
| that's not scalable, and doesn't tend to rational,
| balanced thinking.
| jawarner wrote:
| 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.
| sdanvjsndks wrote:
| 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.
| instagraham wrote:
| > "M-COOL"
|
| Seeing these, I always wonder which came first--The phrase or the
| abbreviation?
| kuang_eleven wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| supernova87a wrote:
| "Beef, designed in California"
| jgwil2 wrote:
| 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."
| bumblebritches5 wrote:
| jcranberry wrote:
| More information:
|
| https://www.natlawreview.com/article/10th-circuit-confirmed-...
| blakesterz wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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?
| bobro wrote:
| 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.
| soco wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The EU probably requires calculating energy in kilojoules
| (which are 4x calories) and then converting back to calories
| which results in different rounding.
| abrowne wrote:
| I believe the US allows .5 to round _down_ to 0, while I
| 've seen EU labels list e.g. .5 g of fat, so I wouldn't be
| surprised if they require it.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Will no longer buy American beef, thanks.
|
| It's amazing how badly this affects the credibility of the USA.
| Victerius wrote:
| 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.
| anamax wrote:
| > 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.
| bluGill wrote:
| Not very many. Consumers mostly go to the store and grab
| whatever. Very few even read the label.
| moate wrote:
| *Citation needed for every sentence in this post.
| ompaLompa wrote:
| Critically thinking - If that was the case this wouldn't
| have been fought in court.
|
| A few google searches show the effect is minor to major
| depending on product category. I wasn't able to find exact
| numbers. But as a personal note I would never buy meat
| labeled "Made in China"
| dqpb wrote:
| Three words are not enough to convey the biography of a cow.
| floor2 wrote:
| 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.
| ldoughty wrote:
| 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.
| Retric wrote:
| 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.
| ldoughty wrote:
| 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.
| Retric wrote:
| I am drawing a line between what could still be
| manufactured if US borders closed today and what couldn't.
| Rain comes from water outside the US borders but a war
| isn't going to stop rain the way it might stop platinum
| imports.
|
| Copper can be sourced inside the US, if you didn't then you
| have a foreign dependency in your supply chain which is
| something the DoD actually cares about for obvious reasons.
|
| Any other definition is just meaningless marketing crap
| like "The Best" which is legally meaningless.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| machinerychorus wrote:
| 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.
| jcranmer wrote:
| 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.
| behringer wrote:
| Yes. It's really not hard to understand. At the very least
| it should say Made in America *except the catalytic
| converter
| jcranmer wrote:
| But the catalytic converter itself _was_ fabricated in
| the US; only the _raw materials_ for the catalytic
| converter didn 't.
|
| (I'm using platinum ingot since that's how I'm assuming
| you'd buy a lump of platinum metal. If this is not
| correct, substitute for whatever the thing is you'd
| actually buy from somebody like Rio Tinto. I'd have used
| the platinum ore directly, but my understanding is that
| it generally is produced as a byproduct of other metal
| refining.)
| Retric wrote:
| Which means if the US went to war with X, you can't make
| cars. That's a critical distinction when talking about
| defense contractors.
| jerf wrote:
| I think you're arguing from the perspective that there's
| some objectively right "Product of the USA" meaning. But
| there isn't. A USA Apple Pie did not start by the USA
| creating the universe, paraphrasing Carl Sagan.
|
| The problem is that there are differing degrees of "Product
| of the USA" here. "Big Meat" wants to slap it on anything
| they want that vaguely touched the US at some point prior
| to packaging for marketing purposes. Absolutionists may
| want it to mean nowhere in the value chain that produced
| that particular animal does any other country appear, and
| may even say, yes, that means the car you mention is not
| made in the US. (Presumably there is a limit to how far
| back the analysis needs to go, since cows are not native to
| the US.) The guy on the street probably doesn't care, and
| may care about it for quality issues (perceived or real) or
| care about the vast majority of the profit of the value
| chain being retained in the US.
|
| _Generally_ , when it comes to product labeling in the US,
| the federal government declares what labels mean, and in
| the absence of that, labels have very little meaning [1].
| In this case, the court majority ruled that the meaning the
| government outlines was fulfilled by the meat labeled as
| such in the package. This is not wrong, it just happens to
| not be the definition preferred by other people, and
| they're going to Congress to get it changed.
|
| So, to answer your question, yes and no and maybe, all at
| the same time. Hence the problem.
|
| [1]: It occurs to me as I type this that more of the labels
| could stand to be clear about which is which. If my bread
| says it is "whole wheat", is that in the set of meaningful,
| legally-defined labels, or is it just something the
| manufacturer felt like they could stick on because there
| was a whole wheat grain that accidentally got into the
| dough? I don't know, and my not knowing is the point, not
| the question itself.
| Retric wrote:
| False advertising still applies.
|
| The only loophole is short descriptions by default have
| an ambiguous meaning. "Made with Oak" could mean you used
| an oak spoon at some stage in the process. So, it needs
| to be extremely egregious which this case wasn't.
| jsonne wrote:
| 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.
| reginaldo wrote:
| For cattle, yes, but how far do you go? Imagine trying to tag
| Milton Friedman's pencil:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67tHtpac5ws
| twelvechairs wrote:
| 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...
| bigcat123 wrote:
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| 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.
| cbsmith wrote:
| Yes, what we need are more food labels. That way it'll be less
| confusing for customers.
| batch12 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > _" 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.
| batch12 wrote:
| Whatever it is, it should be well understood. If that means
| finished in the USA, fine. If it means cradle to grave
| within the borders of the US, fine. Right now it means
| nothing since it isn't clear and is used as a label to
| drive sales through obscurity.
| istjohn wrote:
| 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.
| reginaldo wrote:
| > 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.
| istjohn wrote:
| Yes, it's a good thing. Otherwise there would be a great
| number of things our elected representatives would want to
| execute in law on behalf of their constituencies that they
| would be unable to do so because the burden of legislating
| in sufficient detail would be too high.
|
| In fact, there is a legal theory gaining traction in
| conservative circles that seeks to neuter the federal
| government by arguing that Congress cannot delegate law-
| making to the executive branch. They argue that Congress
| must lay out laws in full detail instead of expressing a
| general intent and creating executive institutions like the
| EPA, FTC, and FAA to then elaborate and administer detailed
| regulations. The effect would be to make our laws brittle
| and short-sighted.
| b_t_s wrote:
| I would consider that to be their primary job function.
| Especially at the higher levels. The rule of law would
| break down if they didn't. Laws are like product specs.
| They cover the core stuff as best they can, but there are
| invariably areas where they are a bit buggy, ambiguous, and
| incomplete. We already have problems with loopholes, but if
| judges weren't allowed to to exercise some degree of
| reasonable judgement when things are not 100% crystal clear
| those problems would be orders of magnitude worse.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > 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,
|
| And who decides that? A lot of things have blurry lines and
| I don't know who you expect to clarify them. A court where
| two sides argue seems like the best solution to me. Not a
| great solution, but it falls into that quote about
| democracy being bad but still the best.
| babyshake wrote:
| 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.
| katbyte wrote:
| similar to "Assembled in the USA"
| dwater wrote:
| I'm sure consumers will love "Pork Chops: Designed in
| Texas, butchered in USA from components sourced in USA
| and elsewhere".
| talideon wrote:
| 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.]
| drdaeman wrote:
| > 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.
| batch12 wrote:
| 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.
| thesimon wrote:
| >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.
| LegitShady wrote:
| I think there are big quality control issues with shipping
| away cattle to other countries for slaughter as well. Your
| ability to control the final product is much reduced
| compared to when everything is regulated locally.
|
| I remember reading about a company importing crab and fish
| from china that on analysis found out what they were
| receiving wasn't necessarily what they ordered, and the
| Chinese themselves were officially importing the food from
| canada, but what was shipped out to customers wasn't
| necessarily that just labelled as that.
|
| Murky waters, hard to control compared to everything being
| domestic.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| A massive amount of seafood in the US is intentionally
| mislabeled, which leads to a lot of problems because
| tilapia, for example, causes upset stomachs for a lot of
| people.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| A lot of seafood is mislabled because it's hard to
| identify. Especially given that there might be a few
| random fish in a catch that is predominantly X.
|
| Meanwhile, tilapia is farmed. Hence misidentification
| there would be intentional.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Not sure how that works. 'Tilapia' isn't a fish. Its 'any
| whitefish'
| fsckboy wrote:
| whitefish in the US seafood market traditionally refers
| to cod, haddock, pollack and similar species, even
| including sole, flounder and halibut.
|
| tilapia are cichlids, and are not part of the old
| definition; not sure if the definition has changed
| phonypc wrote:
| Tilapia certainly does not refer to any whitefish. If
| tilapia is not "a fish" then neither are salmon or tuna
| or probably a dozen other common names.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Tilapia certainly does refer to (almost) any whitefish.
| Over 100 different fish are called 'tilapia'. Because
| their flesh is white, and they cannot pass as a more
| valuable fish.
|
| For comparison, there are 8 species of salmon. We eat
| maybe two of them.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > Over 100 different fish are called 'tilapia'
|
| All of which are cichlids.
|
| That's a long way away from "any whitefish".
|
| "Whitefish" most commonly refers to cod and pollock, not
| tilapia.
|
| And we eat every species of salmon, not just two.
| phonypc wrote:
| Most of those 100 fish are not eaten at any great scale.
| If you ask someone for examples of whitefish, you're
| going to get answers like cod, haddock, pollock etc. None
| of which are tilapia. Tilapia arguably isn't even an
| example of whitefish.
| [deleted]
| talideon wrote:
| Here in Ireland, our reputation with raw material is
| important, because what we make is traded as best-of-
| breed, which in agriculture means any meat is grass-fed
| and free-range, and any fish we catch is mostly from
| managed wild stock (important for salmon), or explicitly
| labelled as farmed.
|
| The big initial scandal around that was around live
| cattle exports to the Middle East. This was largely down
| to animal cruelty, because live exports happened because
| nobody wanted to export halal meat from Ireland. Amongst
| other things, this eventually lead to the establishment
| of halal slaughterhouses in Ireland, which, while it
| didn't entirely eliminate the animal cruelty argument, at
| least minimised it.
|
| It doesn't hurt that everything in the EU is traceable.
|
| Mind you, then there's the whole horsemeat scandal in the
| EU. Me, I've no problem with horsemeat, but I'd just
| prefer it to be labelled as such. It's not all that
| terribly different from beef.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| There is an infamous example in the EU with "Parmaham".
| Take pigs from the Netherlands, put them in a truck and
| drive to Italy.
|
| Presto Italian ham.
| riffraff wrote:
| Are you sure?
|
| As far as I remember Prosciutto di Parma has a proper
| disciplinary, the pigs must be bred in Italy, and not
| even all of it.
| joelfried wrote:
| 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.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| Why not just follow current immigration policy (jus soli
| births)?
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > 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"?
| moate wrote:
| 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!".
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Yea, they should move away from "Product of USA" and start
| using "Controlled Origin Denomination", like European wine
| producers use.
| have_faith wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| 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?
| sethammons wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| _> 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?
| [deleted]
| stickfigure wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Sounds like "assembled in... from foreign components" or in
| this case "butchered in... from foreign cattle"
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