{"id":120,"date":"2007-08-17T21:56:38","date_gmt":"2007-08-17T21:56:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucefinley.com\/counter-terrorism\/food-labels-quiet-revolution\/"},"modified":"2008-01-07T17:30:16","modified_gmt":"2008-01-07T17:30:16","slug":"food-labels-quiet-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/globalization\/food-labels-quiet-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Food Labels&#8217; Quiet Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>While implementation of a country-of-origin law languishes, some stores take the initiative.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Melynda Saldenais surveys grocery aisles composing labels that<br \/>\nreveal where food comes from and how it is grown.<\/p>\n<p>Descriptions &#8220;like luscious and succulent&#8221; leave her cold,<br \/>\nSaldenais said this week in a central Denver store as she reviewed<br \/>\nher literary efforts. But she&#8217;d love to be able to write<br \/>\n&#8220;China-free&#8221; &#8211; if a new company initiative pans out.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our beef is imported from Australia,&#8221; reads the label she wrote<br \/>\nfor frozen burgers, &#8220;where cattle roam freely on lush green<br \/>\npastures. They graze the way nature intended on 250 species of<br \/>\nnative grasses and herbs.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Saldenais and her company, the Boulder-based national chain Wild<br \/>\nOats Markets Inc., along with its future acquirer Whole Foods<br \/>\nMarket and other upscale grocers, are responding to a nascent<br \/>\nrevolution: Americans are demanding to know the origins of every<br \/>\ntomato, strawberry and steak.<\/p>\n<p>Tainted food scares and increased U.S. reliance on imported food &#8211;<br \/>\nfrom Europe, Mexico, China &#8211; drive the growing demands for details<br \/>\npreviously kept secret.<\/p>\n<p>Congress ordered country-of-origin labeling in 2002. But the<br \/>\ngovernment, under pressure from mainstream grocers and meatpackers,<br \/>\nhas failed to implement the law.<\/p>\n<p>The 2007 farm bill pending before U.S. senators would again order<br \/>\nthe government to act.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Wild Oats and Whole Foods are embracing what customers<br \/>\nwant.<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re using auditors and inspectors to investigate sources of<br \/>\ningredients in all of the products on their shelves and then<br \/>\nproviding detailed labels.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What we&#8217;re seeing in this country is increasing consumer concern<br \/>\nabout where and how their food is produced. &#8230; The stores that are<br \/>\nlabeling now, they see the right end of the law,&#8221; said Joe<br \/>\nMendelson, legal director at the Center for Food Safety, an<br \/>\nadvocacy group.<\/p>\n<p>Imports accounted for 14 percent of American food consumption in<br \/>\n2005, compared with 7 percent in the mid-1980s.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the new labeling is somewhat confusing. A Whole Foods<br \/>\nplacard at the Cherry Creek store promotes &#8220;natural Moroccan<br \/>\nquality&#8221; salmon from &#8220;Sussex County, New Jersey&#8221; that is<br \/>\n&#8220;produced by a company committed to sustainable fishing<br \/>\npractices&#8221; to ensure &#8220;the health of the oceans.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Whole Foods shoppers &#8220;appreciate more, rather than less<br \/>\ninformation\/education,&#8221; spokeswoman Ashley Hawkins said.<\/p>\n<p>Saldenais, 39, meets regularly with growers, ranchers and<br \/>\nexecutives to glean facts and check the accuracy of their claims.<\/p>\n<p>But the origins of some meat, frozen fruit and other foods at Wild<br \/>\nOats still aren&#8217;t labeled as precisely as the country-of-origin<br \/>\nlabeling law would require, company officials concede.<\/p>\n<p>The push to reveal origins is leading to closer scrutiny of an<br \/>\nincreasingly global supply chain, said Dan Heiges, Wild Oats<br \/>\ndirector of standards.<\/p>\n<p>Auditors recently exposed a potato-chip maker who had switched to a<br \/>\ncheaper Chinese source of granulated garlic without notifying Wild<br \/>\nOats.<\/p>\n<p>Vegetable snacks containing ingredients from China recently were<br \/>\nyanked from shelves after inspectors found traces of salmonella.<\/p>\n<p>Wild Oats now requires suppliers of its private-label products to<br \/>\ncertify whether any ingredients come from China or other countries<br \/>\nassociated with risks, spokeswoman Sonja Tuitele said. Suppliers<br \/>\nare told to find alternative ingredients in a new initiative aimed<br \/>\nat declaring food &#8220;China-free,&#8221; Tuitele said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We would love to be able to tell our customers that, or at least<br \/>\nidentify products we sell that do not have any ingredients from<br \/>\nChina,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Whether this is possible or not remains to be seen because<br \/>\ningredients from China are so pervasive in our food supply.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>For years, studies have shown Americans favor precise labeling on<br \/>\nfood, for safety and to &#8220;buy local.&#8221; Last month, a Consumers<br \/>\nUnion poll found 92 percent of Americans want country-of-origin<br \/>\nlabeling. A Colorado State University study in 2002 found consumers<br \/>\nwould even pay more for carefully-labeled food.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m pregnant. It&#8217;s really important for me to know that food is<br \/>\nsafe and clean,&#8221; Tannaz Walker, 31, said while reading a yogurt<br \/>\nlabel at a Wild Oats east of Boulder recently with her 1-year-old,<br \/>\nAndrew, perched atop her cart.<\/p>\n<p>She picked up a &#8220;New York steak&#8221; made of &#8220;grass-fed&#8221; beef,<br \/>\npresumably from the United States. Or was it?<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Well, goodness, it&#8217;s a &#8216;New York steak.&#8217; I hope it&#8217;s from the<br \/>\nU.S.,&#8221; she said, as her son began to stir in his seat.<\/p>\n<p>Further investigation showed it came from Australia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While implementation of a country-of-origin law languishes, some stores take the initiative. Melynda Saldenais surveys grocery aisles composing labels that reveal where food comes from and how it is grown. Descriptions &#8220;like luscious and succulent&#8221; leave her cold, Saldenais said this week in a central Denver store as she reviewed her literary efforts. But she&#8217;d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,16,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food-supply","category-globalization","category-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucefinley.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}