Cattle producers filed new evidence against USDA in a court trial
Ranch groups R-CALF USA and the Cattle Producers of Washington (CPoW) have presented a series of documents to the court in which they are trying to prove that USDA is allowing multinational meatpackers mislabel a significant volume of imported beef as “Products of the USA”.
The lawsuit filed against USDA and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue ha begun in June 2017 with the cattle producers claiming that the beef imported and sold to the American consumer as “Product of USA” has not gone to a substantial transformation in the United States processing plants, as required by law, informs R-Calf USA in a statement.
“It is disingenuous for the Administration to say it is encouraging consumers to buy American while it simultaneously directs its legal team to defend the multinational meatpackers’ fraudulent practice of putting a USA label on imported beef”, said the CEO of R-Calf USA, Bill Bullard.
In his defense, Secretary Perdue argued that imported beef is to be deemed and treated as domestic beef so long as the importing country’s food safety standards are equivalent to U.S. standards. Consequently, the Secretary allows multinational meatpackers to label imported beef as “Products of the USA” even if the imported beef receives only minor processing, such as unwrapping and rewrapping the package.
For the cattle producers though, this point of view is undermining the White House campaign for local product and a recent initiative to increase agriculture output in the US.
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