Thanks to this article from ABC news for the tipoff, which informs us that producers will now be required to label each food with its country of origin. Initially this sounds like a giant leap for mankind, until you read the fine print. Sorry folks, the following foods are exempted:
- Processed foods
- Foods used as ingredients in other products
If that strikes you as insane, it’s because it is. It unfortunately excludes just about everything at the supermarket — all but the simplest produce items.
Think I’m overreacting? From the article:
For instance, lettuce must now be labeled, but salad mixes containing lettuce and carrots will not be. Raw shrimp requires a label but if the store adds spices, it then becomes unnecessary.
So now producers will just add extra ingredients to our foods, and avoid compliance. I mean, they will certainly be motivated to avoid the “up to $1,000″ fines, right? The penalty, I should point out, is cheaper than the measures it would take to become compliant.
The largest joke of all is that the new laws are being enacted because of food safety concerns. This insanely implies:
- Bad food from a certain country condemns all other food from that country
- Food safety is directly related to place of origin (it is not, plenty of unsafe food is produced in the U.S. of A.)
- and worst of all: CONSUMERS DETERMINE THEIR OWN FOOD SAFETY BY GLANCING AT A TINY STICKER (because if the label says “China” and there had been a problem with food from China…wouldn’t the food already be removed from the shelves before any customer had the chance to read the label?)
Now, obviously these new laws aren’t entirely bad, but they do not go far enough. It’s a good firstbaby step, but clearly if food safety is the real issue, then we need more advanced tracking information (not just a country of origin) so suppliers can specifically remove only the tainted food, and not everything from an entire country.
Where I do see this making an impact is in the locavore community. The labels will be a victory for people who are concerned about where their food comes from. Much of this crowd shops at places like Whole Foods, which does a great job of it already.
(photo courtesy of thegreenpages)
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