House moves to block new meat label requirements

WASHINGTON -- The House voted Monday to prohibit the Agriculture Department from requiring meatpackers and grocers to inform consumers whether hamburger, sausage and other beef, lamb and pork products came from abroad.

The 208-193 vote would effectively exempt meat products from the country-of-origin labels that Congress last year ordered for a wide variety of foods, including fish, fruits and vegetables.

Ever since the labeling requirements were included in a farm bill signed into law last year by President Bush, grocers, large livestock operations and packinghouses have been trying to get it reversed or at least postponed. The law required that foods start carrying the labels by September 2004.

The effort to roll back the labeling requirement faces a more difficult road in the Senate, where the idea originated as part of the 2002 farm bill. A subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee was expected to take up the issue on Wednesday.

"It would be completely irresponsible to reverse course," said Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota. "The recent mad cow scare in Canada is one more reminder that the new labeling law can serve as an important marketing and informational tool."

The food labeling vote was on an amendment by Rep. Dennis Rehberg, R-Mont., to preserve the requirement as part of a $17 billion spending bill for the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration.

The Republican-Controlled House Appropriations Committee, with support from the White House, put language in the bill forbidding the administration from implementing the labeling law. Monday's 208-193 vote was to reject the amendment by Rehberg to preserve it. The House passed the overall bill later on a 347-64 vote.

Rep. Henry Bonilla, R-Texas, heading the effort to scuttle or at least delay the labels, said they would cost grocery stores, meatpackers and others processors at least $1.9 billion the first year, based on preliminary Agriculture Department estimates. He predicted consumers would experience "sticker shock" once the costs were passed through.

"If you're a domestic producer of beef or pork, you are going to have to comply with an enormous amount of record keeping, a great deal of cost," said House Agriculture Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.

The administration said in a White House statement Monday that the question is a marketing rather than food safety issue and should be studied more before the government starts requiring the labels.

Supporters of the labeling requirements disagreed, saying the labels could have helped officials quickly trace cattle linked to a cow infected with mad cow disease in Canada. At a minimum, they say, shoppers would be armed with more information about what they were buying.

"This is a basic consumer-right-to-know issue," said Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio. "We have to know where our meat comes from."

While opposed by the leading livestock producers groups such as the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and the National Pork Producers Council, the labels are supported by the American Farm Bureau and the National Farmers Union.

"At a time when much of American agriculture is flat on its back, we need the chance to say America matters to us and America matters to the consumer," said Rehberg, who operates a small cattle ranch in Montana.

Not including live animals traded with Mexico and Canada,11 percent, or $2.2 billion worth, of the beef that American consumers eat is imported, the Agriculture Department says. In U.S.-consumed pork, 5 percent, or $633 million worth, is imported. Thirty-six percent, or $207 million, of the lamb that Americans eat is imported.

By a 202-199 vote, the House also defeated an amendment that would have banned the sale of livestock that are so sick or injured that they must be dragged to market -- mostly dairy cows that are slaughtered for meat after they can no longer produce milk. The Agriculture Department estimateds 130,000 such "downed animals" are brought to slaughterhouses every year.

In other areas, the bill would reduce by $872 million what Congress appropriated last year for running the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration. It also would omit the $1 million that President Bush sought to pay for Agriculture Department audits of the nation's top four beef packers: Tyson Foods Inc., which owns IBP; Cargill; Swift & Co. and Farmland Meats.

In addition, it would devote $4.6 billion, $181 million less than Bush sought, for the WIC nutrition program covering 7.6 million low-income pregnant and breast-feeding women and their children. The bill would provide $4.7 billion to improve rural electric and telephone lines, $911 million less than this year, and $3.39 billion for farm credit loans, $551 million below this year.

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