Day 233 - 26 03 96 - Page 28
DAY 233
HOWARD LYMAN, Examined:
1
2 Q. That is not the same thing as the regulations themselves.
3 Do you not accept that this is the position -- you are the
4 expert, apparently, Mr. Lyman -- under US law, all meat
5 which is imported into the United States has to have on it
6 (the meat) a label stating its country of origin, in the
7 words "product of" and then the name of the country; those
8 words have to appear on the immediate container of the meat
9 and also on its outside container, if it has one. Do you
10 agree with that?
11 A. I agree that it will be on the container, but I have
12 seen meat that does not have that on it.
13
14 Q. Do you agree that it must carry that labelling until such
15 time as it is further processed within the continental
16 boundaries or the jurisdictional boundaries of the
17 United States?
18 A. The normal practice in the US to is to almost totally
19 disregard that.
20
21 Q. But you agree that your understanding of the law of the
22 your country is the same as mine?
23 A. The law, as I understand it, is that what the country
24 of origin states on it, we are willing to accept that is
25 there. When the Federal Inspection Service looks at it,
26 their regulation is that, barring anything else, the stamp
27 of "USDA inspected" will be treated as domestic product.
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29 Q. But only after processing; only after processing can it
30 lose its country of origin label; do you agree?
31 A. It all depends on how it is handled. If it was taken
32 out of the box in the processing plant and was not ground
33 or cut and was transported again, in my opinion, it would
34 lose the country of origin.
35
36 Q. Why, Mr. Lyman, in your first statement, did you write this
37 -- and I am looking at the last paragraph on the second
38 page; it is very short, so I do not ask you to look at it,
39 but you may if you wish to do so -- "North America imports
40 about one-third of all the beef exports in the world.
41 After it clears any border inspection, it is treated with
42 the same label as domestic production, and in most cases
43 even the meat handlers could not identify where the product
44 was produced"? That is wrong, is it not?
45 A. That is normally what is happening in the industry.
46
47 Q. How do you say that it happens in the industry if the legal
48 requirement is that if it comes from, let us say, Costa
49 Rica, the meat itself, the box and the outside container,
50 must all carry the information product of Costa Rica? How
51 is it that it happens in the industry in the way you
52 describe in this paragraph?
53 A. I have never in my entire lifetime in the cattle
54 business ever seen the Federal Government enforce a
55 regulation on labelling. What happens in the industry is
56 my experience that I have tried to represent in my
57 statement.
58
59 Q. Can you tell me, when you speak of ignorant, ill-educated
60 operatives telephoning round in the event of a shortage ---
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