Mystery Meat

[woodchip]

Seems meat will no longer have a country of origin on the packaging:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Under threat of trade retaliation from Canada and Mexico, the House has voted to to repeal a law requiring country-of-origin labels on packages of beef, pork and poultry.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/2015061 ... 046c4.html

Now I don't know about you but I really don't want to buy my beef from Mexico. Canada I don't have a problem with. Thoughts?

[Nightshade]

Seems meat will no longer have a country of origin on the packaging:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Under threat of trade retaliation from Canada and Mexico, the House has voted to to repeal a law requiring country-of-origin labels on packages of beef, pork and poultry.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/2015061 ... 046c4.html

Now I don't know about you but I really don't want to buy my beef from Mexico. Canada I don't have a problem with. Thoughts?

Same here. Although I had eaten chicken and beef from Mexico when I lived there for several years (with no ill effect), I would still like to know where meat products come from.

[callmeslick]

this has been a goal of the US meat packing industry for nearly a decade. They could never find a Congress with so little regard for the citizenry to get it passed.......until now.

I have no problem with meat coming from other nations. I eat Aussie lamb, Canadian pork products, Japanese beef every now and then. Still, obscuring country of origin is generally bad news for US producers, ESPECIALLY beef and poultry growers.

It is my hope that Obama and/or the Senate will block this, but if it gets passed into an overall Ag bill, Obama may not wish to veto over labelling.

[Vander]

I'm sure they could do something like require meat produced in the US to have a "Produced in the USA" label. That way if it doesn't have the label, or isn't otherwise voluntarily labeled with an origin you trust, you have information to make your choice without requiring foreign compliance.

Personally, I'm for a lot of labeling requirements to help facilitate informed consumption.

[vision]

I'm still waiting to try some non-animal meat. I hear the research is coming along nicely.

[Tunnelcat]

Score another win for the big food companies and a loss for the consumer who'd like to know where their meat comes from and have that choice to say: "No thanks, I'm not buying".

By the way woody, meat from Mexico or Canada doesn't scare me as much as the possibility of meat coming from China.

They've already invented a plant protein-based fake chicken meat that even has the texture of the real thing. Yummy. On the plus side, no more salmonella.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/meat-sub ... d=16560226

[Lothar]

Last election there was a "mandatory labeling" bill in Colorado that I ended up talking to some relatives of mine (farmers) about. They were super duper opposed -- not because they don't want to label their product, but because they don't like the fact that different markets have different and sometimes contradictory labeling requirements that mean they would have to create different labels for food sold in Colorado than food sold in Kansas or Nebraska (they live ~10 miles from the border of the 3 states.) IIRC it was something like one state requiring that they put "not grown using X" and another state requiring that they couldn't put that on the label or something equally conflicting.

I want to know where my food comes from and what goes into it. While it'd be nice to mandate "made in Mexico" or especially "made in China" on meat products, I think we'll at least see plenty of "made in the USA" stickers to help us out. And hopefully whatever the labeling requirements are, they're sane and consistent.

[woodchip]

Score another win for the big food companies and a loss for the consumer who'd like to know where their meat comes from and have that choice to say: "No thanks, I'm not buying".

By the way woody, meat from Mexico or Canada doesn't scare me as much as the possibility of meat coming from China.

They've already invented a plant protein-based fake chicken meat that even has the texture of the real thing. Yummy. On the plus side, no more salmonella.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/meat-sub ... d=16560226

I don't eat fish from China. Seems there was a report that Chinese fish farmers use sewage filled ponds to raise the fish:

http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/tilapia.asp

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/15/world ... l?hp%27%29;

[Tunnelcat]

You don't want to eat most store bought frozen shrimp either. China and Thailand both farm raise shrimp in water of questionable quality with documented slave labor and both of those countries have flooded our grocery stores with their product. I haven't eaten store bought shrimp in over 10 years. I kind of miss that, but I'd rather skip the Chinese sewage chaser. If these countries start flooding the U.S. with beef, we won't know it either, other than the fact it will probably be some form of hamburger and frozen. Ick.

[callmeslick]

most stores here(quite possible not on the left coast) offer the option of domestic shrimp, which cost roughly double, but are wild-caught. That is all I buy, and when we get to this time of the year, I have a seafood supplier from VA that sends me 5 lb boxes of domestic shrimp from the Carolinas, deep frozen. You are right, TC, about the dubious conditions under which the Asian shrimp are farmed. Likely not an issue with sanitation if cooked, and the top vein cleaned,but still.......

[Tunnelcat]

Damn, I wish we could get fresh shrimp on the West Coast. We usually get nothing but Asian farmed stuff on our store shelves. I don't even trust what's called "fresh". No thanks. Sometimes, but very rarely, we can get wild caught cold Alaskan shrimp, but they're tiny little boogers, and usually frozen.