Tell USDA to Uphold Grass-fed Meat Standards!

Last week, the USDA announced it would be withdrawing its standard for the grass-fed meat label. The agency is giving producers who used the grass-fed label thirty days to (1) convert the current “grass-fed” standard, in which 99% of the animal’s feed must be from grass or forage, into their own private standard; (2) use some other “recognized grass-fed standard,” or else (3) develop a new, voluntary, grass-fed standard—whatever the company decides is fine with the USDA.

All of this is being implemented through the USDA’s Process Verified Program (PVP). PVP is not an inspection program intended to hold producers accountable to their claims, but rather a marketing program that allows producers to make their own claims about their products and slap a USDA logo on the label.

This is the same program that allows Perdue Foods, for example, to market their chicken as being “Humanely Raised,” “Raised Cage Free,” on an “All-Vegetarian Diet,” or with “No Animal By-Products.” The “Humanely Raised” label was such a sham that it drove a Perdue chicken farmer to start a campaign to stop the USDA from putting their stamp of approval on the company’s meat because consumers were, in the farmer’s words, being “hoodwinked.”

We have already seen the dilution of organic standards through industry influence. What if cows that are 50% grass-fed can use some kind of “grass-fed” label? We can only expect larger companies to abuse this system to the detriment of consumers and small farmers.

Write to the USDA and urge them to rethink this move!

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Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack

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Uphold Strict Grass-fed Meat Standards

Dear [Decision Maker],

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I was distressed to read your agency's announcement that it would be withdrawing your standard for the grass-fed meat label in favor of your Process Verified Program (PVP). However, the PVP is not an inspection program intended to hold producers accountable to their claims, but rather a marketing program that allows producers to make their own claims about their products and slap a USDA logo on the label.

With this PVP, you are giving producers the option of developing a new, voluntary grass-fed standard -- and apparently whatever the company comes up with is fine with the USDA, no matter how low that standard is!

So if producers can create their own standard and call their product "grass-fed," and if there are no labeling regulations, it could contain 80%, or even 50%, grass-fed meat, with the balance being grain-fed -- but you'd let them proudly label their meat as if it were 100% grass-fed!

What I find most outrageous is official reasoning offered by your agency. You claim that, since a different USDA department, the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS), must approve meat labels, there is no guarantee that a USDA-approved marketing claim such as "grass-fed" will be approved by FSIS.

In plain English: because two departments under the same agency cannot coordinate, the grass-fed standard is being eliminated!

This is outrageous. I call on the USDA and all of its agencies to uphold the 99% grass-fed meat standard that was hammered out years ago through meetings with stakeholders, and insist that the grass-fed label be used only by companies who maintain that 99% standard.

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