Wash. feedlot owner fights beef labeling

Cody Easterday estimates that some 25 percent of the cattle at his 30,000-head feedlot come from Canada, with maybe a few cattle from Mexico in the pens.

But weeks after the government began requiring producers to label beef with the country the animals came from, Easterday says he's already getting lower prices for that beef - as much as $30 per head. It's just one reason he's suing the U.S. Department of Agriculture to rewrite the beef labeling provision in what could be one of several attempts to overturn a law long sought by consumer and farm groups.

"It's a flawed law that's going to cost the industry hundreds of millions of dollars," Easterday said.

The new law, required by the 2008 Farm Bill, went into effect Sept. 30. It requires grocery stores to identify the "country of origin" for meat, produce and certain nuts. Retailers have six months to fully comply before the USDA will begin enforcement.

Similar labeling requirements are already required for seafood.

Meat packers and retailers have long opposed the rules, saying they would be expensive and burdensome.

In the lawsuit filed last month in U.S. District Court in Eastern Washington, Easterday Ranches Inc. contends that labeling will increase record keeping and operating costs and deter meat packers from buying Canadian-born cattle from Easterday's feedlot.

The Agriculture Department declined to comment Monday, citing the pending litigation.

Beef industry insiders have said the law could be troublesome in the Northwest, where so many Canadian cattle are shipped across the border to U.S. feedlots and slaughterhouses.

There are just two commercial beef packers in the Northwest, both in Washington - AB Foods in Toppenish and Tyson Foods Inc. in Wallula - and as much as 30 percent to 40 percent of their cattle come from Canada. Tyson Fresh Meats, a subsidiary of Tyson Foods, closed its Boise, Idaho, plant two years ago.

Cattlemen in the Southwest might buy cattle from Mexico, but the issue of cross-border cattle shipments doesn't strike home in the Midwest or Northeast, Easterday said.

"There's this total integration of the industry, and they move back and forth across the border all the time," he said of the U.S.-Canada cattle industry. "Any time there's a wrench in that, we jeopardize the livelihood of the cattle industry on both sides.

"They need us and we need them," he said.

Easterday also said the program offers no additional safeguards that beef products are any safer, though consumers may believe it does. Rather, it just allows retailers to discount non-U.S. products, which are just as high in quality, he said.

"Every single one of them is subject to the same food safety laws and the same USDA inspection," Easterday said. "It's not a safety program. This is a marketing program only."

Consumers have a host of issues they consider when buying products, including origin of ingredients and environmental sustainability, said Chris Waldrop, director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America.

The group has long supported labeling, but not as a food safety program.

"For consumer organizations, it's a way to have more information about the source of your food," he said. "And how consumers use that information is up to them."

The labeling requirement is popular with small, independent ranchers who sell their own products.

However, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association opposed the mandate on grounds that it should be voluntary. More than 95 percent of its membership is composed of ranchers.

Labeling supporters have always said it would bring higher prices for American beef, said Colin Woodall, NCBA executive director of legislative affairs. So far, it's simply driving down prices for everything else, he said.

"The question all along, from both sides, is what the true value is to consumers," he said. "Now we're in a situation where we're finally going to know what value (labeling) has to the consumer."