This week, the USDA begins requiring retailers to include country of origin information on several products, including fresh and frozen produce, nuts, and fresh meats. We’ve seen cute little stickers on most of our fruits and vegetables for a while that tell us where they hail from. But within the next 6 months, expect to see similar declarations of origin on beef, pork, lamb, etc. I asked our CEO Bob Meyer, who on his own has over 40 years’ experience with retail advertising and retail marketing, for his thoughts on what this means for supermarkets.

“I think it will create a huge advantage for American breeders... probably an almost unfair advantage because the assumption is that the controls here over the raising of livestock are much tighter and more stringent than they are in foreign countries. And I don’t know if that’s true or not, but, that being the assumption, it will give the advantage for American growers. It will put an impetus on foreign growers — which is probably very positive.

You almost have to believe that the reason this got passed is that American breeders wanted it and lobbied for it because it does create kind of an unknown advantage for unknown reasons.

It will put the impetus on subjectively lesser origins. We don’t know that they’re lesser, we just think they are. The impetus on retailers of those products and those suppliers will be to promote their own cleanliness. I think it will create some opportunity, either for Americans to come out and say, “we have better meat here, “ or for foreigners to claim that they do something better.

It’s interesting. meat breeders have been trying to figure out a way to brand meat for a long time. Meat, historically, has been largely unbranded and if there’s any assumptions of quality that come to the meat it’s from the store, not the breeder, because meat is one of the things that the store prepares and presents, and upon which their reputation is built. Breeders, for at least 20 years, have been trying to figure out how to brand meat. Coleman has tried with beef— that’s where our president Chris Mortenson worked. Right here in Wisconsin, Provini has tried with veal. People have been trying to do it with limited success, because the stores don’t want to get caught having to stock three different brands of beef.

It seems to me that what will eventually come from this is an opportunity to brand the meat. I mean, if New Zealand lamb is really better, then now there’s much more of a reason to call attention to the fact that it’s a New Zealand product. But it also creates a huge downside risk. If there is any significant problem or health risk in the food supply of a foreign company, it will kill them in the marketplace here. All it will take is one person saying they got sick from a “New Zealand lamb product,” and it will hurt all New Zealand lamb sales. This will probably have a huge impact on quality control in foreign countries that import these affected goods into the US.”