With the Farm Bill 2.0 being under review, we sat down with NCBA’s CEO, Colin Woodall, to discuss mandatory country-of-origin labeling.
“So NCBA has long-standing policy against mandatory country of origin labeling, and this is an issue that has been divisive within the industry for many years now. NCBA’s policy process is focused on the members of the association, and time and time again, the members of the association have come in and made the decision that we are against mandatory country of origin labeling,” said Woodall.
“And so that’s why we continue to fight it the way that we do. And the main reason right now, and why we are fighting any action that would put mandatory country-of-origin labeling in the Senate version, is we’ve already tried this. Mandatory country of origin labeling was law for six years,” added Woodall.
Woodall also said, “over the course of those six years, we as producers did not see the value or the benefit. Everything that was promised from the proponents of COOL did not happen. And in fact, there is multiple studies, or there are multiple studies, conducted by land-grant universities, economic analysts, and USDA that showed it added costs to our industry without the value.”
“And we continue to see in consumer data that country-of-origin labeling is not high on the list of things that consumers are looking at while they’re making their beef purchasing decisions. When you have a mandatory program, basically you’re giving the government the right to market your beef. And we just do not believe that the government is best positioned to make that happen,” emphasized Woodall.
“We can do that because we know what the consumer wants, and the consumer has any number of various things that they are looking for when it comes to choosing our product. And we need the flexibility to be able to adjust to those demands and those requests, and mandatory programs run by the federal government are not going to give that to us. Again, we know that’s the case because we had mandatory COOL for six years,” Woodall said.
“It did not work. Let’s not make similar mistakes in this Farm Bill,” said Woodall.
Southeast AgNet also discussed the difference between MCOOL and Product of USA Labeling with Woodall.
“So, there’s a lot of similarities between Product of the United States and M-COOL. NCBA is very supportive of the voluntary Product of the United States program that Secretary Rollins has put in place. And over the course of the past several weeks, she has put out several press releases talking about various companies and companies that are utilizing that program, but it’s voluntary,” explained Woodall.
“And when you have a voluntary program, it allows those retailers or those companies that want to use it to be able to design it in a way that works for their packaging. And if they believe that they have a consumer base that is looking for it, they can be able to serve those needs. But also, when you look at voluntary labeling programs, we know that it’s not always a U.S. product that people are looking for,” said Woodall.
Woodall added, “Sometimes they’re looking for a regional product or a state product or a product that comes from a specific production practice. And when you have voluntary programs, that gives you the flexibility to be able to do that in order to meet the demand. USDA is not a marketing organization. Their expertise is not in going out and marketing our beef. That’s best left to the industry. And with a voluntary program, we can do that a whole lot better than we can with a mandatory program.”
Audio Reporting by Elizabeth Sanders for Southeast AgNet.