Earlier this month, USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) issued a proposed rule which would significantly narrow the scope of voluntary U.S. origin claims on FSIS-regulated products (meat, poultry, and eggs).

Currently, FSIS’s Food Standards and Labeling Policy Book allows “Product of USA” or similar claims to be made if the product was processed in the U.S., even if the source animals were born, raised, or slaughtered abroad. FSIS received serval petitions requesting revisions to this standard in the last few years and in response commissioned a study which found that most consumers did not understand and were misled by the current U.S. origin claims.

Accordingly, FSIS is proposing to authorize “Product of USA” and “Made in USA” only if all FSIS-regulated components of the product are derived from animals born, slaughtered, raised, and processed in the U.S. and (2) all additional ingredients, except for spices and flavoring, are of domestic origin. The proposed rule also allows for qualified origin claims to be made provided that they describe the processing steps which occur in the U.S. (e.g., “Sliced and packaged in the United States using imported pork”). Furthermore, the same criteria would apply to state origin claims (e.g., a “Made in Maryland” meat product would have to be born, raised, slaughtered, and processed in the Maryland).

The proposed rule notes that it does not conflict with the country of origin labeling (COOL) regulations for certain imported commodities sold at retail in 7 CFR Part 65 and that such products should continue to comply with those requirements.

Comments to the proposed rule are due by May 12, 2023.