Discussion: US Repeals Meat Labeling Law After Trade Rulings Against It

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Discussion for article #244234

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So does this mean the USDA labeling is irrelevant now?

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The 2002 law had nothing to do with mad cow disease, which was not detected in Canada until 2003. It was all about protectionism.

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I live in the country. I buy directly from the local farmer. In grocery stores insist on knowing. ASK ASK ASK. I wonder how they will trace outbreaks of bacteria/disease when it’s origin and pathway are secret…

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Good gawwd’! Since when is truthful disclosure “discriminatory”? Objectively, the WTO, obviously in the interest of money and “retaliation,” isn’t addressing the discrimination against end users (“we, the people who consume it”), who have a right to know where the “food” we’re eating originates…oh, and where diseases may be coming from.
Seems, on the face of it, they’re sowing the seeds for many future lawsuits against them and those organizations who want to block access to information the public should have. It appears the WTO is looking for trouble. And we, the consumers, have a right to know! Period.

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So the bill repealing the labeling was in a bill passed by Congress. A bill doesn’t become law until it’s signed by the President. So Obama signed off on this labeling repeal?

Just another instance of what will become a trend: transnational or global trade organizations will overrule the wishes of individual nations’ citizens.

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Those two words “truthful disclosure,” have never crossed a Republican politicians or Republican Lobbyist lips and if they somehow had even spoke them, they wouldn’t know what they mean!

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I don’t want to be buying beef fed on grass grown from slashing and burning a tropical rain forest. The victory for the meat industry is that now I will never know.

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This is very scary to me. I want to know where my beef is grown. We Americans should demand that labels show where meat is grown. I can’t believe that President Obama would sign something like this.

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You will never know if you get mad cow disease where your meat came from.

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I’m furious. Vote Democratic in 2016.

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But which meat industry wins?

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Who are the good guys in this story? Ranchers? Pbhppt. Meat packers? Pbhppt. WTO? Pbhppt. Congress? Double Pbhppt. Raspberries all around.

Meanwhile, American meat packers should be careful what they wished for; Mexican meat packers will be knocking at their back door before they know what hit them. Watch for yet another once profitable industry to be outsourced, monetized and tax privileged. Economic profits earned by production will be Romneyed into securitized, untaxed, offshore, financial profits while Republicans gain another category of unemployed workers’ urine to test for home grown marijuana. Triple raspberries, and if I could flip the bird with my feet, I’d balance on my rear end and extend four salutes at once.

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I don’t care what I eat. Why would I?

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The irony, of course, is that almost all instances of meat-borne pathogens causing illness in consumers have involved unsanitary conditions at U.S. meat-packing operations.

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Perfect vehicle for pathogens to be introduced … on purpose.

Congress should be the ‘tasters’ of incoming meat from wherever…

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The overwhelming majority of Americans will receive no real benefit from this law. After Walmart ran out the local mom and pop’s retailers customers found prices creeping higher. So will the average consumer when our own farmers find themselves outsourced or living just above poverty.

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a provision by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, would require labeling of genetically modified salmon recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration

She did this to protect Alaska, not American consumers. Alaska is the number 1 producer of wild salmon in the world. It matters to Alaska’s salmon industry that wild salmon be premium priced. People will pay more for food, especially living creatures, that isn’t genetically modified.

I live in a ranching area in East Oregon pretty much run by conservatives. You can bet they’ll applaud the lack of restrictions, until it comes back to bite them in the butt, when the market is flooded with cheap beef imports. They don’t want government interference until they need government interference.

Worse than the economic impact, those countries are known for their extremely inhumane livestock slaughtering methods. Animal rights activists are going to be all over this.

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Just wait until the TPP and TTIP kick in.

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I’m lost. Just what is it about people voluntarily paying more for non-GMO food that doesn’t protect American consumers? Worse, how are you so certain that those selling GMO salmon won’t charge the same high prices that Alaskan harvesters charge?

Or conversely, how does depriving consumers of informed choice accrue benefit to those consumers?

Obama is big on these trade agreements and on ceding power to the GMO industry. Take a look at who’s in our FDA. And once his pet project on behalf of the oligarchs called the TPP kicks in, we’ll be losing even more control over our own destiny.

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