http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/18/us-usa-meat-idUSKBN0O31G820150518
This is going to get ugly fast.
The WTO has ruled that you don’t have a right to know where your meat came from.
First is the mitigating factors – steers are frequently not born, raised and slaughtered in the same place. There are probably regulatory and tax rules behind that. This is especially true in Canada. Do you care if a Texas steer was slaughtered across the border in Mexico?
If you happen to pick up a roll of the cheap(?) hamburger at walmart, you find out exactly how global meat production has become. The hamburger (undoubtedly frozen until they put it in the display case) has a long list of countries that might have supplied some of the protein. Argentina is not a huge surprise if you paid attention in Geography class, some others not so much.
What do you want the US Government position to be on country of origin labeling?
Most of this is protectionism. I really don’t care where beef was born, raised, or slaughtered unless there is an issue such as mad cow disease. Even then, knowing it was from Canada or the US would not matter. I’d want to know how close it was to the outbreak.
Most people are more interested in what it was fed (GMO etc), given antibiotics, and treated humanly or not. Rich liberals don’t want to eat beef that was shouted at for example. 😉 Starving people in a famine – less concerned about it.
Unless they’re in India. British troops have no moral issue with eating their horses. Indians would rather die first, and did.
“…Remember, never take no cut-offs and hurry along as fast as you can. ” – Virginia Reed