Congress believes some Americans are more equal than others. How else could it have passed (by overwhelming margins and over a presidential veto) the 2008 Farm Bill, which amounts to about a $7 billion annual transfer from the pockets of American taxpayers to high-on-the-hog agribusinesses?
To leave no doubt that these “farmers” are the exalted class, Congress included a truly Orwellian set of requirements referred to euphemistically as “Country-of-Origin Labeling” (COOL) for agricultural products like beef, chicken, pork, lamb, vegetables, and fruit.
COOL is justified by its proponents as a means of helping consumers make informed decisions. But COOL is nothing more than a ploy to thrust the marketing costs of U.S. producers on processors, packers, wholesalers and retailers, while stimulating demand for U.S. beef, chicken, pork, vegetables and the like by raising the costs of handling imports. And with the supermarket industry operating at about one to two percent profit margins, there isn’t any doubt about who will be flipping the bill.
A story in today’s Wall Street Journal gets right to the bottom line in its opening paragraph: “Grocery bills, already surging because of higher commodities costs, will almost certainly rise as costs are passed along for implementing a new country-of-origin food-labeling law, the supermarket industry says.”
The Department of Agriculture estimates first year compliance costs for entities in the supply chain to be $2.52 billion. But USDA grossly underestimated the cost of implementing COOL for fish and shellfish in 2005: the actual costs were 6 to 11 times higher than estimates.
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