The Farm Bill…finally!

April 29, 2008

After months and months of what appeared to be constant delays it appears that The Farm Bill may actually be signed. This past Friday, the House and Senate reached tentative agreement on the new $290 billion bill. Yet another slap in the face for the Bush White House as the lawmakers agreed to spend $10 billion more than allocated by congressional budget committees last year (Bush's recommendation was $5.5 billion and barely kept up with inflation).

The bill includes almost $10.5 billion for nutrition programs, $405 million to be spent over 10 years on the cleanup of farm-related pollution in the Chesapeake Bay, a new permanent program that guarantees aid to farmers and ranchers suffering weather-related losses, a reduction in the tax credit for ethanol made from corn (to 45 cents per gallon from 51 cents) and most importantly the requirement for Country of Origin Labeling for imported meat and vegetables.

Posted on Monday 5/5 by Lisa
Does anyone realize how much expense this Country of Origin Labeling is going to cost us, the consumer? This C.O.O.L. requirement, requires the wholesaler, distributor and the store owners to have seperate bins or places to store vegetables from every single country that they recieve their products from. In other words let's say that your grocery store has lettuce, tomatoes, onions, or any of his selection of vegetables from 3 or more countries. That's usually so he can provide you, the consumer, with more variety of choices. So let's say he has lettuce from the United States, the U.K and South America just for examples. He has to therefore have a bin in his storage area when he receives the products for 3 different kinds of lettuce. Then out in the store where you buy the product they have to be kept separate as well. So just for lettuce he has to make room for 3 different bins in his backroom cooler and in his upfront cooler. Now think about all of the different vegetables that your grocer has in his store and then imagine all of the extra room that he's going to need just to keep them separate from each other because of the C.O.O.L. requirement. Same with the distributor that he gets his vegetables from, as well as the wholesaler. Now think about that with the meat section. Ok so all of them have to come up with the expense of expanding their storage areas and rearranging their stores so they can accommodate this C.O.O.L. requirement. Who do you think that this extra expense is going to get passed down to? Now not only will we have that expense handed down to us but, the extra expense that it takes to have this brought to us by the trucks as well with the freight charges that have gone up with the gas costs being what they are. Do you really think it's worth it now?

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