The Meat Institute recently announced a new economic analysis by Decision Innovation Solutions found that reinstating mandatory country of labeling (MCool) for beef and pork would impose significantly higher costs across the United States meat supply chain.
Analysts say MCool would cost the beef and pork industries about $1.02 billion in the first year including $721 million for beef and $296 million for pork. They stated most of these expenses would be recurring operational costs associated with tracking record keeping product segregation labeling and verification rather than one -time investments.
The U.S. imports meat from roughly 30 to 40 countries. I would say some of that is true, but you can’t tell me now that they don’t label and track all beef today in case of a problem. They are not about to not track it in case of a problem right now because if that was the case and they had no idea where it came from they would have to call all the meat in the U.S. back and dispose of it all, in my opinion.
The real reason they don’t want it they want to buy meat from any country and make you think it came from the U.S. Because all of us know if it has a U.S. label most Americans will buy U.S. beef. We actually import beef from Namibia Africa. How many of you ranchers will buy that if that’s what the label says? It may be perfectly fine, but I’ll just eat my beef fed 200 days on corn and if I’m eating in a restaurant I’m hoping it came from the U.S.
It’s not that complicated we don’t have to ID all U.S. cattle. We should only identify those coming in live from another country and put a label on all beef not raised in the U.S. and also not allow retailers to repackage foreign meat and label it U.S.
An older woman received a new car from her four children. This had a lot of fancy stuff on it like most new vehicles do. The kids asked their mom “How do you like your new car?” She said, “I don’t. It has so much unnecessary stuff on it.” She said, “the other day I put it in reverse and it showed a picture on the screen of someone running over an old lady.”
A rancher’s wife posted on Facebook that she’s pretty sure her husband has taken more photos of a new herd bull this week than he has taken of her since they got married.
Editor’s note: The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not represent the view of High Plains Journal. Jerry Nine, Woodward, Oklahoma, is a lifetime cattleman and grew up on his family’s ranch near Slapout, Oklahoma.
PHOTO: A tray of packaged raw beef ribs, with more trays of meat in the background at a grocery store. (iStock-#2160294496 │ nastya_ph)
