Made in the U.S.A.

By Margot Roosevelt/Susanville

Darrell Wood is proud of his cows--and he wants us to know it. As they chomp through the bitterbrush of California's high desert, their ears waggle a plastic ID tag adorned with a tiny American flag. And when steaks from Wood's 1,500 Angus are sold in markets out West, they sport a bold red-white-and-blue label: BORN & RAISED IN THE USA. "American ranchers raise the safest and best-quality cattle in the world," says Wood, a fifth-generation cattleman. "Consumers deserve to know where their meat comes from."

Six years ago, Wood, 49, was deeply in debt as

prices for U.S. cattle plunged, squeezed by foreign imports and pressure from big meatpackers. He sold off part of his land and took a second job as a car salesman. "It was slow death," he recalls. "I couldn't offer my kids a life in ranching." But today, together with a handful of other California cattlemen, he sells his certified American beef to specialty grocers and restaurants at a premium. Says Wood, scattering jackrabbits as he steers his pickup past neatly fenced meadows: "Now I feel more confident of the future."

Ranchers such as the Wood family, along with fishermen, and fruit and vegetable growers, are spurring a movement to change the way consumers shop for food. While imports have doubled in a decade, swelling to 13% of the U.S. diet, most Americans have no idea where their produce originates. T shirts and TVs are required to carry labels--but not T-bones. Only shipping containers must disclose the source of most raw agricultural products: once beef is sliced into stew meat, or apples are tumbled into display bins, the information is rarely passed on to customers. That suits the giant slaughterhouses, wholesalers and grocery chains, which earn higher profits on cheaper imports. But U.S. farmers, claiming they lose an advantage with buyers who may be worried about mad-cow disease from Canadian beef or hepatitis A from Mexican vegetables, are fighting for laws to require that food be labeled with its country of origin. In surveys, 80% of consumers say they prefer to buy American. "Meat bears a USDA-inspected sticker, but that doesn't mean it is American," says rancher Carolyn Carey, who trademarked the Born & Raised in the USA label.

The battle over labeling is raging in Congress among different factions of the food industry, some helped and others hurt by increased imports. Two years ago, farmers and ranchers, allied with consumer groups, won the day, and a new federal law set a deadline of Sept. 30, 2004, for retailers to identify the national origin of meat, fish, fruits, vegetables and peanuts. But meatpackers and grocers, backed by the Bush Administration, claimed that country-of-origin labeling, known as COOL, amounted to protectionism, and they waged an aggressive campaign against the law. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued complex regulations--requiring layers of record keeping and third-party audits--that further galvanized opposition. Last January a measure postponing the law's effect until 2006 was slipped into an omnibus funding bill. The exception: fish, which must be labeled by September, thanks to the salmon fishermen's patron, Alaska Republican Senator Ted Stevens.

Senate minority leader Tom Daschle, attuned to ranchers in his home state of South Dakota, is pushing a bill to reinstate this year's across-the-board deadline. The law, he says, "enables Americans to perform a simple but significant act of patriotism every time they visit the grocery store." On the other side, Representative Charles Stenholm, a Democrat from Texas, mindful of Lone Star State feedlots that import Mexican cows, is co-sponsoring legislation to jettison mandatory labeling in favor of a voluntary system. That bill is backed by the four processors--Tyson Foods, Swift & Co., Cargill and National Beef Packing Co.--that control 81% of the nation's cattle market. They argue that foreign governments could retaliate for any labeling law by blocking American produce. "We do not need to jeopardize our access to foreign markets by adopting such protectionist policies," Tyson lobbyist Sara Lilygren recently e-mailed Senate staff members.

Whether patriotic or protectionist, country-of-origin legislation, after years of debate, got a boost from terrorism. "With 9/11, COOL took on a life of its own as a food-safety issue," says Barry Scher, vice president of Ahold, the supermarket conglomerate. "It got hard for Congress to look the other way." But retailers contend the law would do nothing to control contamination or pesticides, much less bioterrorism. And, they say, it would cause chaos in the grocery aisles. Should stores be fined $10,000 if a clerk tosses bananas from Costa Rica under a shelf tag reading ECUADOR? Should the same ocean-caught fish be labeled NORWEGIAN or AMERICAN, depending on the flag of the ship? And what's a consumer to make of hamburger that contains beef bred in Canada, fattened in the U.S. and ground up with Australian trimmings?

But while retailers allege it will cost billions to comply, consumer activists claim that COOL is doable. Forty-eight other countries require identification by national origin for one or more commodities. And since 1980, Florida has mandated the labeling of foreign produce--an effort that takes an estimated two man-hours per store per week to execute. In fact, most produce carries stickers that could include the information. In addition, two food chains, Wild Oats and Whole Foods, already label food by origin.

To counter the accusations of protectionism, farmers point out that U.S. safety, labor and environmental rules are tougher than those in most foreign markets--making American-produced goods more expensive. Pesticide use is more restricted in the U.S. than in many foreign countries. Child labor is forbidden. And inspectors keep closer tabs on whether fields have toilets and hand-washing facilities. Last November three people died and 600 became ill with hepatitis A from unsanitary Mexican scallions at a Pennsylvania restaurant. Likewise, hundreds have fallen ill over the past decade after eating Mexican cantaloupes and strawberries and Guatemalan raspberries. "Americans prefer American produce because they don't want to get sick," says Chuck Obern, a Florida vegetable farmer. COOL, he says, allows him to "promote my wares with information rather than resort to tariffs."

In the late 1990s, Florida farmers sent an undercover video crew to Mexico to document sanitary and pesticide violations and child labor. The expose became known on Capitol Hill as the "Mexican death tape." But today several activists have grown quieter, charging that grocery chains are retaliating by canceling orders. "The markup is so outrageous, they don't want anyone messing with it," says a tomato grower. Luis Rodriguez, a consultant for Florida Farmers Inc., an advocacy group, says he listened in on a conversation in which a Wal-Mart official told a supplier that he planned to stop buying from farmers promoting mandatory labeling. Says Rodriguez: "These guys are scared." A Wal-Mart representative denied any intimidation.

Passions in the fish industry run just as high. Imported shrimp, much of it farmed in Thailand and China, has bankrupted fishermen along the U.S. Gulf Coast. Alaska fishermen, who catch only wild salmon at sea (fish farms are prohibited in the state), are being hammered by farm-raised salmon from Chile and Canada. "In 1988 I got $1 a pound for pink salmon. Now I get 7-c-," says Scott McAllister, steering his boat past Alaska's Glacier Bay. He believes labels will help. "[People] will think it's cool to buy Alaska salmon from a wild and grizzly guy out here," he says. "And they will pay more for something healthy." Under the new rules, seafood must be labeled FARMED or WILD. Scientists say farmed seafood is often contaminated with dioxin, PCBs and other dangerous chemicals.

In the end, the labeling battle is not just about power and money but about identity. To be sure, billions of dollars are at stake. And U.S. producers might capture a bigger share of the dollar that now goes to processors and retailers. But will customers care whether beef is born and raised in Canada or California? Whether tomatoes hail from Mexico or Florida? Whether salmon is Alaskan or Chilean? No one is certain. Nonetheless, rancher Darrell Wood, farmer Chuck Obern and fisherman Scott McAllister are counting on it.