031119 Senate: Sept '04 For Meat-Origin Labels

Washington - The U.S. Senate, the wellspring of the U.S. law requiring country-of-origin labels on U.S. meat, moved toward a vote that would underscore its support for the law to take effect next September.

U.S. meat and food industry groups bitterly oppose the mandatory labels as too costly, and successfully lobbied the House of earlier this year to bar enforcement of the label law.

On Thursday, the Senate began debating a non-binding resolution that would make it clear the chamber wants the country-of-origin labels begin as scheduled in September. The bipartisan resolution was expected to be approved by the Senate later in the day as part of the annual spending bill for the U.S. Agriculture Department.

Some 170 consumer and farm groups support mandatory labeling as a way to distinguish U.S.-grown meat from competitors at the grocery store -- just like with many other products.

"If we can do it for shoes, certainly it would seem to me we can do it for food," said Sen. Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat. Reid accused U.S. meatpackers of lobbying House lawmakers to reverse the law because they didn't want to bother with new labels.

Last year, Congress approved a broad farm policy overhaul that included imposing mandatory labels on all U.S. meat products, beginning Sept. 30, 2004.

Farm groups say the mandatory labels will be especially valuable to American consumers if Canada discovers another case of mad cow disease in its cattle. Earlier this year, Canadian officials diagnosed the deadly disease in a single animal, which prompted the USDA to temporarily close the border to Canadian beef and cattle imports.

But Republican Sen. Jim Talent of Missouri said the labeling law would create too much red tape for retailers.

"A lot of it (the law) is rather vague" and leaves retailers facing potential $10,000 fines for violations, Talent said. He complained that the same labeling law prohibits the federal government from creating a traceback system for meat but still requires verification that the labels are correct.

Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, one of several Republicans supporting mandatory labels, criticized the House for trying to block funding for the U.S. Agriculture Department to carry out the law.

"I believe the consumer has the right to know the country of origin," Grassley said. "Let's not have the (legislative) subterfuge of not funding the USDA."

Grassley also criticized as "outlandish" the USDA's estimates of how much the label law will cost the industry. A recent USDA analysis that estimated the mandatory labels would cost the industry as much as $3.9 billion in the first year.

In September, the General Accounting Office said it was highly skeptical of the USDA's previous estimate the label law would cost $1.9 billion a year. The report by the investigative arm of Congress did not include an estimate of its own.

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