| I've been studying international trade issues affecting animal agriculture for 3 years now. I got into this to facilitate my activities in the fight against the National Animal ID System (NAIS). However the whole international trade environment and it's attendant issues are really fascinating in and of themselves. How countries interact with each other, and how people feed themselves, how the media perceives and reports on issues related to ag and international trade, these are just a few of the things that make this area of study truely amazing. I tell ya, it's a whole different world out there.
One of the things that really surprised me, is the sheer volume of imports and exports in the food and feed world. Now, with country of origin labeling (COOL), you can have your nose rubbed in it everytime you go to the store. That is, if you care to read the labels. As with many things, perception doesn't quite jibe with reality. An example of this is a discussion on one of the national lists I subscribe to in which people were astonished at the fact that a beef steak at a Wal-Mart store bore a label that said 'Product of USA, Canada and Mexico'. Until you start looking at the issue and the supply/demand situation, you think that the beef you buy at the store is from this country. Beef isn't like produce, for example, if there's a foot of snow on the ground, it's a dead cinch that the grapes and tomatoes you just bought aren't from around your area. But how do you tell where the meat in the package came from? Well, without a label, you can't.... (Actually you can't tell exactly where that out of season produce came from, but you can tell it isn't from your area without a lablel.)
I was talking to a butcher at one of our local stores out here in the Mulino/Molalla area about COOL for meats. I was interested in his take on the whole thing. He informed me that he was of the opinion that it was a waste of time, that people didn't really care where their food came from, it was going to make way more work for him than he needed, and besides, there are almost no Canadian and Mexican cattle coming into the US anyway, and what little there was, was in his words 'junk meat'. Apparently his perception wasn't all that accurate either. But then when a primal comes into the store's butcher shop, he isn't told where the cow that the primal was taken from was born, raised or slaughtered, and if he wasn't active in the cattle industry, he wouldn't know any more than you or I.
According to USDA's Foreign Agriculture Service (FAS), in 2007, there were 1,404,871 cattle imported into the US from Canada and 1,090,094 head of cattle imported into the US from Mexico. Generally, cattle coming from Canada are going direct to slaughter, and those coming from Mexico are going to feedlots, although some cattle from Canada do go to feed lots and some from Mexico do go directly to slaughter. In 2007 Canada and Mexico were the only two countries from which live cattle and calves were imported into the USA for any reason.
However, fresh/frozen beef and veal is sourced from an much wider field. Again, according to FAS, in 2007 fresh/frozen beef and veal was imported into the USA from no less than 10 countries -
Australia - 295,613.9 metric tonnes (MT)
Canada - 269,940.5 MT
Chille - 1,155.2 MT
Costa Rica - 5,998.7 MT
Honduras - 152.4 MT
Japan - 544.6 MT
Mexico - 16,570.0 MT
Nicaragua - 28,950.5 MT
New Zealand - 168,220.2 MT
Uruguay - 104,633.7 MT
That's not to say that you're going to see all of these countries show up on fresh/frozen beef, but you might keep an eye out for them. So far I've seen labels with Australia, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, and the USA in various combinations. I haven't seen any label with only one country yet.
COOL was originally to inform the consumers where their food was coming from. It was also thought that it would help support domestic producers. But, at least as far as the local foods movement, in that it might encourage people to buy US when buying local may actually necessitate buying for US, Canadian and Mexican beef. Sounds odd doesn't it?
According to one feed lot owner in Washington state who was interviewed in the Capital Press, at certain times of the year, up to 40% of the cattle in his feedyard are Canadian in origin. He also brought up an interesting observation about cattle and beef in general. His take was that people in the NW liked to buy NW beef, and that as far as he was concerned, cattle from NW Canada fit that description as well as cattle from the NW USA.
He may have a point. If you're into eating locally, and you lived in northern Washington state, if you buy beef from a cow raised in the Vancouver BC area, fed on a feed lot located in Washington state and slaughtered in a plant in Washington, it would be more local than if you bought beef from a store that sourced its beef from a feed yard and packing plant in the midwest USA, even though you'd be purchasing foreign born beef. Even if the animal was born, raised and slaughtered in that area of Canada, it would still be more local than one born in say, Idaho, sold to a feed yard in the midwest and slaughtered in a plant in Illinois, then shipped back here for retail sale in a national chian store. How's that for turning the local concept on its head? |
