Food trickery

[grassfarmer]

Here is an interesting article on the trickery that goes on in the retail food sector with regard to food origin and country of origin labeling.
http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/product_of_canada_eh/

[DiamondSCattleCo]

We're in the middle of a debate about this on
ranchers.net as well.

"Product of" is not quite as simple as some would
think, and in my opinion, the current rules work
quite well.

Under NAFTA, current country-of-origin labeling
legislation requires listing the origin (country) of
imported products throughout the marketing
system until the product is acquired by an ultimate
purchaser. Defining the ultimate purchaser of an
imported commodity is critical for beef and beef
by-products. The ultimate purchaser is not
necessarily a product's final consumer. Rather, it is
the last entity to receive the product in the form in
which it was imported.

What this means is that any product that undergoes
significant processing becomes the product of that
country. Why? Because 99.999999% of problems
with the product will be introduced at processing
time. So if you really want to be concerned about
food safety, you don't care where your beans were
grown, but rather where they were processed and
under what inspection rules they were subjected to.

Here's the link on ranchers for anyone whose
interested:

http://ranchers.net/forum/viewtopic.php?
t=25242&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Rod