If you bite into a burger, it might not be from an American heifer. That’s because of an 11-year-old law from the beef industry — the Country of Origin Labeling Law — that says retailers don’t have to tell you where its beef comes from. Even if a pound of sirloin has a “USA” sticker on its plastic wrapper, that still doesn’t mean it comes from America. The USDA says the majority of U.S. beef imports are boneless manufacturing trimmings, tiny bits destined to blend into your ground beef. Packers combine these trimmings to hit a desired lean-to-fat ratio. That means a package of ground beef could have both imported and U.S. beef, even though consumers may not be able to tell from the label where it all comes from. That fact isn’t sitting well with shoppers, who are nervous after a rollercoaster season of food safety recalls. In the most famous example, grocery shoppers have been living in fear of lettuce because of the cyclospora outbreak, which sent a diarrhea parasite into overdrive across the country. Since then, there’s been bad jalapeños, contaminated whole fruits, and dirty vegetables to worry about, not to mention Popsicles that might have shards of glass frozen inside. As for the mystery meat hitting supermarkets, it’s not always clear. Farmers say we need to have country of origin labels on the beef, and that will let the consumer decide for themselves whether to buy it or not.
