Big Meat-opposed. Many small producers-for. Most consumers-don't really care:
So in May of last year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a new rule, which makes the labeling requirements more substantive by requiring meat producers to separate U.S.-born from foreign-born livestock at every step of the process -- no commingling allowed.
And this is where we learn something about how the sector works: As with so many products in the globalized, integrated economy, there is no "American" meat industry. Most of the large scale meatpackers, like Tyson Foods, buy animals from both Canada and Mexico and bring them to U.S. slaughterhouses, which are all subject to the same safety standards. As several meatpacking trade associations led by the American Meat Institute put it in their lawsuit against the new rules: "In short, beef is beef, whether the cattle were born in Montana, Manitoba, or Mazatlán. The same goes for hogs, chickens, and other livestock." (The lawsuit, which will get a full hearing before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, alleges that the labeling requirements are a form of "compelled speech" that violate meatpackers' first amendment rights.)
There are, however, some meat-producing interests that still favor the country-of-origin labels: American ranchers themselves, who just provide the animals, and don't have to deal with separating streams of livestock from all over the continent and tracking it to its destination. (In D.C. advocacy world, this can get confusing: TheNational Cattlemen's Beef Association opposes the labeling requirements, but the U.S. Cattlemen's Association supports them.) These are the people who are worried about mega-corporations taking over agricultural production, and also worry about the impact of free trade deals that have allowed in more imports than they've boosted exports.
Foremost among them is the National Farmers Union, which testified strongly in favor of the labeling requirements at a congressional hearing on the state of the livestock industry Wednesday, and also offered this chart of how quickly the industry has consolidated:
So far, the rules have held, but the court challenge and WTO case may change that. That chart is fascinating to me.
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