Meat labels will no longer contain information on the meat’s origins
(Mirror Daily, United States) – After retailers were asked to include various details such as the animal’s origins, now the meat labeling law gets repealed.
Labels contain, as they should, many details about the product you’re buying. It is also well-known that labels lie. Theoretically, they don’t, actually, except some companies have a very specific choice of words which may not be clear enough for everyone, hence the misunderstanding.
The problem with labels is that consumers want to know what the product contains, where it is from, when it was made, when it expires and so on. On the other hand, producers are not always so keen on giving these pieces of information.
This is why the meat industry has been fighting against the meat labeling law for over a decade and has finally convinced the Congress to repeal the law. The Congress didn’t have much of a choice since the World Trade Organization was ruling against that law and even authorized both Mexico and Canada to begin economic retaliation worth over $1 billion against the U.S.
The government stopped asking for the labels as soon as the law was passed. The main difference for consumers is that they will no longer learn the origins of the meat. The label used to mention where the animal was born, raised and slaughtered, sometimes the three happening in different countries.
Why was this important? Their purpose was to avoid the spread of mad cow disease from meat or cattle that was imported. Although the labels were first required to show this piece of information in 2002, only in 2009 did all packages contain this information.
Of course, now the Congress was caught in the middle. The meat industry finally got what it wanted whereas consumers were highly unsatisfied knowing they might be deceived in the future by labels which will no longer specify where the meat is from.
Fortunately, some other label information will stick such as genetically modified ingredients. So, although you will not know where your pork is coming from you will at least know how natural or artificial it is.
All in all, despite doing things easier for meat producers, consumers are getting worried and health issues might be raised once again at some point, if producers are planning to share less information on their products’ labels.
Image source: www.bing.com
Joe Hennessey
