[Product Tracking] COOL Takes Effect

Consumers want to be able to make informed buying decisions by having clear, complete information on the labels of their food.

This fact, which was addressed by the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act (FALCPA) in 2006, is again the focus of federal legislation. Country-of-origin labeling became mandatory for certain products Sept. 30.

According to Deloitte research released this summer, 50 percent of consumers frequently or always read the list of ingredients on an unfamiliar packaged food item. Even greater percentages of those surveyed responded that they want to see country of origin listed on the label. The research further explains that:

• 84 percent want labels on fresh fish
• 80 percent want them on fresh fruits and vegetables 
• 69 percent want them on packaged food ingredients

With mandatory country-of-origin labeling (COOL) taking effect Sept. 30 for specified retail meats, fish, nuts and perishable agricultural commodities, a number of producers will have no choice but to grant consumers’ wish on at least some of their desired items.

WHAT IT MEANS. COOL is a provision of the 2002 Farm Bill. The recently enacted Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008 (2008 Farm Bill) expanded the list of covered commodities. Just as FALCPA brought plain-language wording to food labels for the major food allergens — milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, peanuts, tree nuts, wheat and soy — COOL mandates that source countries of covered commodities be identified using “abbreviations and variant spellings that unmistakably indicate the country of origin.” Implementation of the provision falls to USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service.

COOL impacts the entire supply chain for specified products, and requires anyone who directly or indirectly supplies a covered commodity to a retailer maintain one-forward, one-back records identifying the commodity by lot number or other unique identifier for one year from the date of transaction. At the retail level, tracking records are to be available to USDA representatives for as long as the product is in stock; for pre-labeled products, however, the label is sufficient evidence.

WHAT’S EXEMPT. Packers and processors that supply covered commodities to their retail customers must provide COOL information to the retailers, based on four general categories of meat products: product of the United States; multiple countries of origin; animals imported for immediate slaughter; or imported finished products to be sold at retail.

Exempt from COOL are the ingredients in processed foods, defined by USDA as “a retail item derived from a covered commodity that has undergone specific processing resulting in a change in the character of the covered commodity, or that has been combined with at least one other covered commodity or other substantive food component … [specifically] cooking (e.g., frying, broiling, grilling, boiling, steaming, baking, roasting), curing (e.g., salt curing, sugar curing, drying), smoking (hot or cold), and restructuring (e.g., emulsifying and extruding).”

Also exempt from the rule are restaurants and other foodservice establishments (such as cafeterias and lunchrooms) and retail stores such as fish markets, butcher shops and stores and certain fresh produce outlets.

The requirements of the interim final rule for mandatory COOL do not apply to covered commodities produced or packaged before Sept. 30, 2008. Because the rule now in effect is not a final rule, some aspects of the regulation could still to change.

The author is staff editor of QA magazine.

More Information on COOL

To find out if a specific product is a covered commodity or is labeled accurately, e-mail cool@usda.gov. You can also visit www.ams.usda.gov/cool.

Or contact the American Meat Institute’s Senior Vice President for Regulatory Affairs and General Counsel, Mark Dopp, at 202/587-4229 or mdopp@meatami.com. The organization also maintains a COOL-specific Web site: www.countryoforiginlabel.org.

COOL's Impact on Industry

With country-of-origin labeling now mandatory for certain ground meat products, many manufacturers are working to determine what their customers want, and working to adjust their production and distribution schedules.
According to USDA, implementation of the new regulation would cost the industry $2.5 billion.

“So that’s not a small dollar figure, obviously,” said Mark Dopp, senior vice president for regulatory affairs and general counsel for the American Meat Institute. “It’s going to have a fairly substantial impact with respect to some costs.”

Dopp said the COOL rules were implemented very quickly — the interim final rule was published in the Federal Register Aug. 1, and COOL took effect Sept. 30 — and leave some questions unanswered, including more concrete definitions of what constitutes a “processed” food or a “substantive” ingredient.
Dopp said the new regulations were forced onto the food industry and that they don’t really meet consumer demand for label information. He cited trends like organic or hormone-free products that were promoted to fill a market demand.

“We have long said that we don’t think this is a good idea. I don’t think, for the most part, the vast majority of consumers care. You see consumer demand driving what companies do,” Dopp said. “If there was money to be made, if companies really thought consumers would pay more, you would have seen country-of-origin before. It would have been done voluntarily by companies.” — Chuck Bowen