Don’t put that in your mouth, you don’t know where it’s been. It could have come from Ghana; it could have come from Argentina. It could be a genetically engineered food; it could have chemicals not legal in this country on it. It could have been bombarded with radiation or it could have disease-causing bacteria on it. A Mama in Tanzania who is paid by the quantity and cannot make enough to feed her family could have picked it or a billionaire living in Bermuda could own the land it was grown on (and never have seen it).

Certainly, a label cannot tell us everything about our food, but it can tell us where our food comes from. All of our consumer products in the U.S. other than food do have labels that tell us where they come from. Therefore, if you are inclined to avoid shoes made in China, you can do so. In the 2002 Farm Bill a law for similar labeling of food was passed. You may have noticed that it is now 2007 and this bill has not yet been fully enacted.

The major argument that free trade advocates bring against environmentalists and human rights activists, who want to bring down agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA and WTO, is that we can use the market to enact the type of reforms we would like to see in the world. The idea is that as consumers we will not buy products made with sketchy ingredients or manufactured in sweat shops. For example, if we think that the things that they spray on crops in China are dangerous, we can forgo eating them. This becomes difficult if we don’t know whether the apples in our grocery store are from eastern Washington or from Argentina.

Many consumer groups are worried about the safety of food that is grown in countries with questionable safety laws. This worry seems even more founded after contamination problems beginning in China and Mad Cow Disease in many countries all over the world.

So far only seafood labeling has made it through the appeals of big food industry to be properly labeled. United Fisherman of Alaska have said that the country of origin labeling laws (along with a provision that all fish must be labeled as either caught in the wild or farm raised) has increased demand and prices for their fish.

American fruit, vegetable, beef, lamb, pork and peanut farmers are hoping that the country of origin labeling will do the same for them. The Big Beef lobby is hoping to keep labeling at bay as long as possible. Free trade advocates and food importers argue that the labeling is unfair protectionism and that it will cost too much. Despite these objections, there is another big push for the labeling to be enacted in the 2008 farm bill. Currently compromise language is being worked out in the both houses of congress.

The new laws will not cover processed food or foods in restaurants and will not show percentages on ground beef containing cows from many places of origin. It has also streamlined the record keeping process in order to try and make the process cheaper for producers.

Many other countries have much more stringent labeling laws, but as long as agribusiness has the money to contribute to reelection campaigns, we won’t get them here. Even if we are also the country who has banned the importation of drugs from Canada.

So for a few more months we’ll just have to hope that our grocers and other food providers label things when they can and that contaminated food from other countries (to say nothing of contaminated food from our own country) doesn’t make it into our meals.