Why would that be a bad thing?
For one, I think it would be terribly demanding to identify all the sources of ingredients. And if it were, producers would resort to "may contain" labels the way they do now for some ingredients, for example, "may contain canola, peanut, soy, or sunflower oil." "May contain ingredients from Thailand, Chile, Canada, China, and Mexico" isn't very helpful.
For another, there's barely enough room on the packaging for what's on there now, most of which no one reads anyway. (I'm assuming packaged food assembled from many ingredients from multiple countries, what with globalization and all that. Cans of tomatoes already say "product of..."."
I'm not sure of the value of knowing the country of origin. Just because something comes from Chile or China doesn't make it good or bad. There may be individual ingredients that are problematic from country A or B but a country's whole offering is neither desirable nor undesirable. If you bought canned stew that came from Germany, Japan, and Mexico, you wouldn't know if the beef came from Japan or from Mexico so how could you evaluate it. Unless the regulation required each ingredient to be identified by country of origin, in which case the label would be unreadable.
Seems to me that if it's really necessary to regulate any player, and I'm not sure that it is, then the importer would be the best target.
The above is based on about two minutes of "thorough" analysis, given that I never before gave a moment's thought to the issue. |
