"The Agriculture Department has estimated the cost could range from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars in the first year alone."
What are the specific reasons for this extra cost?
There's an important active and related issue: ranchers and beef processors recently did not want a rancher/producer to advertise their beef as being free of Mad Cow Disease -- even after this one company paid for their own tests -- because it might force the rest of the industry to test for this disease.
The government claimed that this big marketing advantage to that one company (who was willing to pay for the tests) would have the effect of scaring consumers of all the other American beef -- beef grown and processed by companies not willing to pay for the expense of testing.
Our first term Bush (i.e. Republican) administration allowed banning the testing by this company and thus they could not claim that their beef was free of Mad Cow Disease for export markets, particularly to the picky Japanese market that cares about what they eat.
The Republican administration chose to protect domestic producers, and thus ruled against domestic consumers. For more details see Acres, USA (a liberal organic farmer magazine).
THE ONLY THING THE FDA SHOULD BE DOING IS PUTTING TRUTHFUL CONSUMER LABELING AND TESTING OF FOOD AND DRUGS... AND THAT INCLUDES COUNTRY OF ORIGIN!
Otherwise, these inbred departments can be eliminated.
The Republican party is way off the mark on this issue on labeling and consumer protection. This issue will reflect poorly on this second term. The press will be yelling "Fat Cat, Fat Cat... Halliburton food processors!" all over again."
Please remember the Clinton donor that got caught selling imported and tainted strawberries illegally to the school lunch program (no imports allowed) in Clinton's second term, I believe. These strawberries which made 100's of children sick were grown in a Central American country and they were contaminated with human excrement discharge. Those school kitchens thought they were from the U.S.
If you can't know what you're eating, then at least you should know where it came from.
Hoppy
I'd like to know that too. Adding a couple of words to a label costs nothing. Perhaps they're worried about the extra ink?