Food Rules: Labels Must Now Give Origin

Oct. 5, 2008 -- New regulations at U.S. supermarkets are giving consumers the knowledge they have been asking for—where the fresh food they buy originates.

Recent food contaminations have made headlines across the globe causing deaths, illness and overall unease. Most recently melamine has tainted dairy from China, salmonella was found in peppers in Mexico, there were cases of E. coli infected spinach from California and beef originating in Omaha.

The country of origin labels will now be on beef, pork, lamb, chicken, goat meat, perishable agricultural commodities, peanuts, pecans, ginseng, and macadamia nuts. The labeling will provide a sense of safety and accountability to concerned consumers.

For safety advocates it is a huge step forward. "It's vitally important to ensure that products coming in from other countries as well as ones growing here are quickly identified in an outbreak," says Caroline Smith DeWaal, Director of Food and Safety Center for Science in the Public Interest.

But some food safety advocates say country of origin labeling is not specific enough. They want to see labels containing bar codes that can automatically trace foods all the way back to the farm.

The tomato industry was furious with the Food and Drug Administration when their crop was wrongly targeted this past summer in one of the nation's largest salmonella outbreaks. Better labeling, and especially the use of barcodes in labels, could have streamlined the investigation and saved millions of dollars when perfectly good tomatoes were left to rot.

The labeling law passed in 2002, but food producers fought it until now because of the cost and burden.

"The industry has fought labeling tooth and nail because if you have labeling… people could decide whether they wanted to eat this food or not," says Michael Pollan, author of "In Defense of Food." There are worries that though peppers from Mexico are safe now, as is spinach from California, consumers might not be interested in buying these foods from these locations.