TELL USDA TO WRITE COUNTRY OF ORIGIN LABELING!

Tell USDA to write strong rules for country-of-origin labeling! Consumers and family farmers and ranchers have been fighting for years to require labeling about where food comes from. Now, after months of headlines about tainted food imports and years of delay by Congress, we are closer to getting country-of-origin labeling for meat and produce. Country-of-origin labeling for seafood has been required since 2005. Mandatory labeling is scheduled to go into effect for red meat and produce in September 2008. Right now, the USDA is starting to write the rules for how the labeling program will work for meat and produce, and asking for comments about the existing rules for seafood. Click here to tell USDA to write rules that cover as much food as possible, by limiting exemptions for "processed" foods, and allowing farmers, ranchers, and fishermen to use common sense record keeping systems to keep costs down - go to: www.fwwatch.org

FOOD AND WATER WATCH (continued)

As you may have seen in the news, the House of Representatives passed their version of the Farm Bill on Friday afternoon. And your emails made a difference! On several key issues, bad amendments were either withdrawn or defeated. Here’s the wrap-up:Factory Farms – An amendment to lift the cap on payments to large farms from the Environmental Quality Incentives Program was defeated on the floor of the House. EQIP is a conservation program that gives grants to farms to improve their environmental practices.

Removing the cap on farm size would allow large factory farms to receive grants to build systems for managing the vast amounts of manure their operations generate. The defeat of this amendment was good news for those trying to make factory farms pay to clean up the pollution they create.

Country of Origin Labeling – After lots of behind-the-scenes drama to head off a threatened amendment to gut the program, the House version of the bill clarifies how country-of-origin labeling will be instituted for meat and produce. And it keeps the process on track so labeling will be required in September 2008. In light of the furious opposition by the meat, produce, and grocery industries, this is a major victory for consumers who took action to say they want COOL now.

Organic Production – The House version of the bill includes funding to help farmers transition to organic production and also more support for research into organic production methods.While we made good progress on these fronts, the Farm Bill is a much bigger package of policies.

One of the cornerstones of the Farm Bill is policy on commodity crops like corn, soybeans, cotton, and rice. The House version of the Farm Bill leaves in place a broken system for these commodity crops. The House missed an opportunity to re-instate supply management programs that would stop the overproduction of these crops that leads to low prices for farmers and cheap feed for factory farms.

Instead, they tinkered around the edges of bad policies that have been in place since 1996. But the Farm Bill process is far from over – the Senate has to do their version of the bill, and then the two versions have to be merged together in a conference committee.

Congress will start their August recess later this week, so you might be seeing your Senators and Representative out in your community. Tell them (especially the Senators) that you want a Farm Bill that: *gives consumers country-of-origin labeling *restores conservation programs like the Conservation Security Program *supports organic production methods and *establishes supply management for commodity crops instead of current programs that encourage overproduction - Click here for more about the Farm Bill - check out: http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/