As our readers know, in March, USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) published a proposed rule to amend its regulations to define the conditions under which the labeling of meat, poultry, and egg products, as well as voluntarily-inspected products, may bear voluntary US origin claims. The current FSIS standard allows “Product of USA” or similar claims to be made if the product was processed in the US, even if the source animal were born, raised, and/or slaughtered abroad. FSIS received serval petitions requesting revisions to this standard and in response commissioned a study which found that most consumers did not understand and were misled by the current US origin claims.

As a result of the study, FSIS published the proposed rule to resolve the consumer confusion surrounding the current voluntary origin label claims for FSIS-regulated products. Under the proposed rule, a “Product of USA” or “Made in the USA” claim would only be allowed on meat, poultry, and egg products when derived from animals born, raised, slaughtered, and processed in the US. FSIS clarified that, under the proposal, establishments would not need to include these claims on the label, but if they chose to include them, they would need to meet the requirements of the rule.

The comment period closed on June 11 and FSIS received over 3,350 comments, the majority of which are in support of the proposed rule. Notably, Farm Action, the Rural Coalition, and the American Grassfed Association issued a joint public comment in support of the proposed rule. In their comment, the organizations stated that the proposed rule “would finally make the ‘Product of U.S.A.’ label a reliable guide for consumers seeking meat, poultry, egg, and other FSIS-regulated products made entirely, or almost entirely, of U.S.-origin ingredients” and “would be a proper exercise of FSIS’s statutory mandate; enable FSIS to efficiently prevent, rather than sanction, the use of misleading U.S.-origin claims; and generate cognizable economic benefits by protecting consumers and markets from deceptive practices.”