COOL marks first full month After the first full month of country of origin labeling implementation, producers, packers and retailers have begun sorting out in practical terms how to transfer live cattle origin information up the chain to consumers at the retail meat case. What the U.S. Department of Agriculture considers the “educational compliance” phase is expected to take at least another six months. “The best estimate that we are seeing now is that approximately 30 percent of the beef sold in the U.S. will have to be labeled with country of origin information,” says Ryan Reuter, a beef specialist for the Noble Foundation at Ardmore, Okla. Processed items, food service, restaurants and smaller meat markets doing less than $230,000 in business annually, are all exempt from the law. Most beef is already of U.S. origin. The nation’s largest packer Tyson Foods estimates that 90 percent of all the fresh, retail beef and pork cuts produced in the United States will qualify for a U.S. label. All the major meatpackers have said they intend to label everything they can as a U.S. product by spring. During a temporary grace period, USDA is allowing auction markets and packers to use visual identification to determine origin. But government officials have continued to insist that visual means of identification of imported animals alone will not be sufficient to make a U.S. origin claim in the future....