The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association is reacting to the reveal of the new Product of the USA Label and we caught up with Kent Bacus, Executive Director, Government Affairs for NCBA to learn more.
Bacus said, “We’re excited about this new Product of the USA label. This is something that has been fully enforced since January 1st of this year and it’s something that NCBA has been working on for many years to really address some big concerns. So, yesterday’s event was the big rollout of that and they’re really trying to do a big promotional campaign to make people more aware of it, not just consumers, but also producers who can take advantage of it. And you know, for us, what the Product of the USA label really represents is the fact that, you know, now that loophole that was allowing imported beef to carry a Product of the USA label, that loophole has been closed and the retailers and packers cannot use that anymore. What it does now though is it gives our producers an opportunity if they’re choosing to market with those origin labels and they want to play that, they think there’s a lot of consumer demand.”
“Now they know how they can do that. Now they know the rules and now they know how they can build that out as part of their business plan. So, this is a positive step forward. We think it’s going to be a good opportunity all around. But you know, this started with NCBA’s grassroots, with our affiliates nationwide engaging on this almost a decade ago and bringing up these concerns, going out, actually investigating and finding incidents where you had imported product that was carrying these different labels. That was a big concern for us and so we took action,” said Bacus.
Audio Reporting by Dale Sandlin for Southeast AgNet.