*I hope I am not duplicating this post. I though it was very interesting.

"If I can afford to, I buy organic," said Grace Clark, a homemaker in San Francisco. "If not, then I try to buy American. It's my second line of defense against questionable agricultural practices." Fifty-one percent of Americans try to buy USA-produced foods.

* THE COOL RULE * see below article to commenmt on the "COOL RULE"

The Department of Agriculture's COOL (country-of-origin labeling) rules require identification only on fish and seafood and whether they were farmed or wild-caught.

But beginning Sept. 30, rules are set to expand to cover beef, lamb, pork, peanuts, and fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables.

The rules now apply only to retail goods, not foods sold at restaurants, and they don't apply to foods that are "substantially altered." That means, for example, that the fish in a fish stick doesn't have to be labeled, says Billy Cox, a spokesman for the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service.

The more comprehensive COOL rule was supposed to go into effect on April 4, 2004, as part of the 2002 farm bill. But Congress voted to delay all but the seafood rule in 2004 and again in 2005.

Seafood made it through because of the strength of the Alaskan congressional delegation, which wanted to help Alaska's fishermen.

The full COOL rules are in the midst of a public comment period that began on June 20 and lasts for 60 days.

Will knowing where food comes from make it safer?

Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director at the non-profit Center for Science in the Public Interest, says yes.

"With traceability you get accountability. If the original source of an ingredient or food item is hidden, they can use any growing or processing techniques they want because they'll never be found out," she says. "The absence of information is a shield for those who are not exercising proper care in protecting the safety of the food supply."

Not that COOL is always negative. Consumers who are worried about mad cow, for instance, sometimes seek out Australian beef because it's typically grass-fed and therefore safe from the feed-spread disease, says Urvashi Rangan of Consumers Union.

Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition at New York University and author of What to Eat: An Aisle-by-Aisle Guide to Savvy Food Choices and Good Eating, agrees.

"The real reason (some in the food industry are opposed to COOL) is that if consumers knew how far food traveled, they might be upset about it. Or if they knew that the food was being grown in countries where the sanitation standards aren't as high as ours, they might raise their eyebrows."

But Regina Hildwine, senior director of food labeling and standards at the Grocery Manufacturers Association, says country-of-origin labeling is expensive and simply doesn't tell consumers that much.

"There were a lot of questions raised about the cost vs. benefits of such a labeling scheme," she says. "One has to maintain records, and you can't commingle products, so you have to maintain a certain amount of separation, and you have to maintain records of the product sales and transfers. So that administrative responsibility is very expensive.

"The information is, if you will, more valuable as a geography lesson than anything else. It might give consumers an idea of the global nature of our food supply, but that is all it does. It's not really going to give consumers important information that they need to make (choices) that are related to their personal health.

CULVER CITY, Calif. — Phil Lempert is flummoxed.
The supermarket guru and marketing expert is only 5 feet into the produce department of his local supermarket, and already he has found four foods that defy his attempts to answer a simple question: Is this from the USA?

First there's Laughing Cow cheese. "It says 'A French favorite' on the front, but it's made in Kaukauna, Wis., with imported Swiss cheese," he says. The label was printed in Canada.

Next comes guacamole in a plastic package that purports to have come from California. But the back of the container tells a different story: "Product of Mexico."

Then there are prepared apple slices packaged with a low-fat caramel dip. They're from Crunch Pak, based in the town of Cashmere, in the heart of Washington state's apple country. And the apples are indeed from the USA.

"But suppose next time you don't want the caramel dip?" Lempert says. He grabs a Crunch Pak package of just apple slices off the same shelf. "Product of Chile," he reads aloud.

Lempert has been sent to the market, with reporter in tow, to research this question: If you want to buy foods produced only in the USA, what are your options when you head to the supermarket?

He grabs a package of Marie Callender's Ranch Croutons and starts going down the ingredient list, peering over his glasses to read the text. When he gets to "hydrolyzed corn protein, spices, dextrose, natural & artificial flavors, dough conditioners …" he stops.

"It shouldn't have to be this hard!" he mutters, throwing the bag into his cart. "The average consumer spends 22 minutes on a shopping trip. You have to worry about fat and calories and health and money. Now if they have to think about where the food comes from, too …"

He sighs.

Knowing all there is to know about what's in the supermarket is Lempert's job.

But it's becoming a chore for more and more Americans. With a steady diet of news about contaminated products coming from China and elsewhere, and the spread of a consumer movement to buy locally produced foods, people are paying more attention to the source of their food.

"If I can afford to, I buy organic. If not, then I try to buy American. It's my second line of defense against questionable agricultural practices," says Grace Clark, a homemaker in San Francisco.

"I have an order of the countries in my head in terms of who is doing a good job of protecting my health and the environment. I equate Europe with the U.S. and Canada. Then Mexico. Then Central and South America, then Asia," she says.

It's not that foods produced in America are always safe; this past year's outbreaks in spinach and lettuce make that clear.

But "we do still have the best food inspections on those foods that are produced here," Lempert says. "Imports have two problems. First is we don't know and can't verify the food safety inspections at foreign facilities, and second is that the inspections here on imported products are very limited."

Doug Powell, director of the International Food Safety Network at Kansas State University in Manhattan, agrees. "Whether your food comes from down the street or around the globe, you want to verify that producers and processors are actually doing what they are supposed to be doing."

One reason for the flood in foreign foods is the enormous pressure from consumers for ever-cheaper products, says Nancy Childs, a professor of food marketing at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia. "When you put your emphasis on price, it will impact quality. You'll sacrifice the quality of ingredients or of the environment or of human rights to get there," she says.

But for the 51% of Americans who say they're making a special effort to buy American-produced foods, it's surprisingly difficult to do. According to the Department of Agriculture, 14.6% of Americans' food comes from overseas. That used to mean brie cheese from France, tea biscuits from England, olives from Greece and for the truly adventurous, canned lychees from China.

Not anymore. Grab a cart and follow along as Lempert attempts to fill his cart with only American-grown and produced foods.

Fruits and vegetables

Forget bananas. They don't grow here, so all are imported. If you're sticking to the USA, potatoes and oranges are your best bet, Lempert says, because most of them are homegrown, although there may be some stragglers from Canada with the former, and South Africa or Australia with the latter.

As it's June when Lempert takes his supermarket tour, there's a good chance most of the produce is from the USA. Growers have fields in California and the Southwestern states and move their staff to follow the growing seasons.

As the seasons turn cooler, the fields move farther south toward the equator.

"You follow the tilt of the Earth," says Tony Gonzalez of the Produce Marketing Association.

With produce potentially coming from any number of countries at any point in the year, depending on everything from rainfall to gas prices to hours of sunlight, it can be hard to guess where it came from.

More confusion is added because food can be grown in one country and shipped in bulk and packaged in another. To illustrate, Lempert grabs a package of colorful mini peppers that says "Packed in USA" on the front but "Product of Mexico" on the back in smaller type.

And the salad fixings are even more confusing. A package of sun-dried tomatoes contains Roma tomatoes, herbs and spices, and olive oil. There's no indication where any of them are from.

"The tomatoes are probably from the USA," says Lempert, and the herbs and spices most certainly from elsewhere. "The olive oil is probably imported; it's either Spanish or elsewhere."

Not Italian. If it were, the package would say so.

That's an interesting point when it comes to foods: Countries of origin always are labeled if they're high prestige — though not always clearly. Take olive oil. A side trip to the oil aisle shows a row of glowing yellow and light-green oils, many labeled "Imported from Italy." But a careful reading of the back label shows that while the bottles may have come from Italy, most of the oil inside comes from Spain, Greece and Tunisia, with some Italian oil thrown in.

Baked goods

Lempert lets us in on a secret. The islands near the bakery are overflowing with fresh-baked bread, rolls and croissants. And while they were baked here — Lempert peeks through the door to point out the ovens and the rising racks — they weren't actually made here, a guess confirmed by one of the hair-netted employees wheeling out fresh loaves.

The dough "comes in either chilled or frozen, and it's baked off here," he says.

There are two clues to whether the market actually makes its own baked goods. "If you don't see mixers or flour on the floor, it wasn't made here," Lempert says.

That said, the ingredients are almost certain to be from the USA, simply because we grow a lot of wheat that becomes flour, as well as producing all our own milk and eggs, he says.

Deli counter

It's anyone's guess where the 50 or so pre-cooked food items filling the counter actually come from. And the white-aproned staffers dishing them up don't know because they didn't make them.

The salads — Asian noodle, chicken, potato and more — come in five-gallon tubs from salad manufacturers, as do most if not all of the entrees, Lempert says.

"The only way you could know if the fruit from the Waldorf salad has foreign fruits would be to find the tub it came in, and it probably just says it's Phil's Salad Factory."

In the cheese section, it's easy. We produce almost all the dairy products eaten here, so the vast majority of the cheeses are from the USA.

As for the rest, because of the European coolness factor, cheese makers are happy to tout their mostly European origins. So there's Danish havarti, French brie, Greek feta and Swiss cheese, all proudly labeled.

Fish, meat and poultry

Next comes the fish counter, the only place in the supermarket where country-of-origin labeling is federally mandated. Between 80% and 85% of U.S. seafood is imported. It's all there in neat black-and-white type.

Lempert picks up a package of salmon from Canada. "If I can have it on my fish, why can't I know on my meat?" he wonders.

Though even here, things aren't quite as clear as they might be. The far end of the counter is taken up with a bubbling tank featuring a few dozen lobsters scrambling over one another. Lempert laughs. The sign reads "Live Maine lobster. Product of Canada."

No chicken is imported, and given the size of the U.S. meat industry, you might think that everything but prosciutto comes from the USA. But a call to the American Meat Institute reveals that about 16% of beef is imported, much of that coming in as trimmings that go into ground beef.

"They come from all over the world. An American who eats a lot of hamburger will be eating imported beef," says Dave Ray of the American Meat Institute. But "these aren't steaks, cuts, chops and ribs," which would be American-raised.

Beverages

Next comes the long soda aisle. This is easy, but only because of U.S. price subsidies on corn. Those subsidies mean high-fructose corn syrup is the cheapest sweetener available, and it's what's used in almost all soda pop.

Coffee and teas are all imported, which only stands to reason, he says.

When it comes to water, it's almost always possible to tell where it's from, at least generally. In the "cool" category are, of course, the original spring waters: Evian, Calistoga, Pellegrino. Each lists with pride the spring from which it is taken.

Newer, more far-flung waters are best exemplified by the Fiji brand, shipped thousands of miles from the tiny South Pacific nation. "Drinking" or "purified" waters are generally labeled "from a municipal source," which means city tap water.

While water companies go out of their way to make their wares sound small, protected and regional, most water is sold by big companies. Dasani is owned by Coke, AquaFina by Pepsi, Arrowhead is Nestlé, and Evian is Dannon, Lempert says.

In the juice aisle, things get even more interesting. Lempert laughs when it's suggested that orange juice is all produced in the USA. And indeed, almost every jug he pulls down from the refrigerated shelves lists not just the USA but also Brazil, Costa Rica and other Caribbean countries as its source.

(In good years, when there are no freezes, Florida, California and a few other states produce almost all the orange juice we drink, says Andrew Meadows of the Florida Department of Citrus. In years when production drops because of weather, more is imported. Brazil is the leading supplier, followed by Mexico and the Caribbean Basin, he says.)

Cranberry and tomato juice are produced in the USA. Apple juice frequently is from China.

Prepared foods

When it comes to heat-and-serve products, Lempert throws up his hands. There are simply too many ingredients that could have come from too many places.

As for cereal, the other staple for the cooking impaired, the wheat, oats, corn and rice the cereals are made from probably are U.S.-grown, as is the high-fructose corn syrup used to sweeten them. But the ancillary ingredients — nuts, dried fruits and so on — aren't easy to figure out.

Why is it so difficult to find out where foods come from?

Lempert believes manufacturers resist explicit labeling because they fear consumers' reaction if they know how far some of their food has come.

"A consumer who sees that the items are from 10 countries isn't going to want that," he says.

Do you read food labels while grocery shopping? If so, what do you look for? Share your comments below.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/200 ... ican_N.htm

The public can comment on the COOL rules in several ways: E-mail: cool@usda.gov Fax: 202-720-1112 Mail: COUNTRY OF ORIGIN LABELING PROGRAM Room 2607 South Agricultural Marketing Service 1400 Independence Ave. SW Stop 0254 Washington, D.C. 20250-0254 Web: ams.usda.gov/cool