Date: June 8, 2007 Lincoln, Nebraska Contact Information: Fred Stokes, 662-476-5568 or 601-527-2459 Michael Stumo, 413-854-2580
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OCM Letter to Chairman Collin Peterson
Opposing Efforts to Weaken COOL
******************* June 8, 2007 Re: Country of Origin Labeling Dear Mr. Chairman: Thank you for your hard work on the Farm Bill. Our members in Minnesota and across the country have a substantial stake in the outcome of your labors. We write to address a statement you are quoted as making to Successful Farming magazine, and printed yesterday. In the article, which addressed country of origin labeling, you are quoted as saying: “I think everyone's reached the conclusion that's [workable COOL rules] not a realistic option at this point.” Our information is that the only organizations claiming COOL is unworkable are those opposing the law when it was first enacted. These consumer opponents tend to manufacture false complexity to prevent implementation of a very simple law. Certainly the laws implementing Social Security, the Patriot Act, and Medicare far exceed the supposed complexity contained in the few lines of the United States Code addressing country of origin labeling. The Organization for Competitive Markets and scores of other interested stakeholder organizations, representing hundreds of thousands of farmers, ranchers, and consumers, believe the existing law is workable. Congress spent much time debating the law with substantial input from consumers and farmers. It has been successfully implemented in seafood. I am attaching a letter signed by these organizations and sent to the Chairmen of the House and Senate Agricultural Appropriations subcommittees. These organizations believe the existing law should be implemented immediately, and that USDA can implement workable rules. Mr. Chairman, the USDA inspects only a very small percentage of imported meat and produce. America has spent 100 years since Upton Sinclair’s book, The Jungle, improving our domestic food system. Current events have shown that massive import volumes have shredded our food safety system, while denying consumers existing country-of-origin information. Imported livestock, meat and produce is already identified as to country of origin, yet our food processors and retailers have vigorously resisted passing that information on to the consumer. Country of origin information is also included on thousands of non-edible goods, from clothes to random access memory chips for computers. That information is passed on to consumers today without the dire consequences predicted by opponents of consumers’ right to know. The few inspections performed on imported seafood reveal very severe human health threats. I am attaching OASIS database records of FDA’s seafood import rejections from China in the month of May, 2007 only. While FDA inspected a small percentage of the total volume of imported product, the agency rejected hundreds of thousands of pounds of seafood for these officially documented reasons: “filthy,” “poisonous,” “wrong identification,” “salmonella,” “nitrofuran,” “unsafe additives,” “pesticides,” and other reasons. It is a mathematical certainty that the uninspected seafood which entered the U.S., and was consumed by American citizens, had similar human health and contamination issues. Because seafood is labeled, Americans now have the power to choose whether to buy seafood from countries such as China in supermarkets (though not yet in restaurants), because they have the power of knowledge that the food companies have fought to deny them. China has executed its food and drug chief for taking bribes from food companies. The Chinese government has reportedly promised to implement a “food and drug guarantee” system by the year 2010, three years from now. Three years is too long. Oddly, the USDA is pressing forward to promulgate new rules allowing poultry to be imported from China, despite these recent events. On June 5, 2007, you said in a press release issued by your office: “Our nation's farmers and ranchers produce the safest, most abundant food supply in the world.” We agree. American consumers agree, and wish to have the same knowledge of food origin as importers and processors receive under existing laws. The COOL law merely requires transmitting that information through to the consumer, rather than withholding it. We hope you will view with skepticism any efforts to “refine” the current law. Special interests seeking “refinement” profit from importing cheap, unregulated products for anonymous insertion into our food supply. The claims of cost have now been shown overstated and absurd, while the human health risks have never been more starkly revealed. Respectfully, Encl: 1. Dan Looker, “Peterson looks for consensus on COOL,” Successful Farming Online, June 7, 2007 2. Letter to Chairmen Herb Kohl and Rosa DeLauro, May 21, 2007 3. OASIS, FDA Import Refusals by Country for May 2007, China, seafood only.
cc: House Committee on Agriculture
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The Organization for Competitive Markets is an nonprofit organization working for open and competitive markets as well as fair trade for American food producers, consumers and rural communities.