Pressure from large cattle operations may force lawmakers to renege on requiring the labels.

WASHINGTON (AP) – In the belief Americans would “buy American” if given a choice, ranchers and farmers persuaded Congress last year to require country-of-origin labels on meats, fish, fruits and vegetables.

Responding to pressure from large cattle operations, packing houses and grocers who say the labels will be too expensive, lawmakers now find themselves under pressure to renege on requiring the labels – at least on meat.

A $17.5 billion appropriations bill debated Monday in the House would forbid the Agriculture Department from spending any of the money to meet a deadline of September 2004 for having the labels affixed to hamburger, sausages and other beef and pork products.

Rep. Henry Bonilla, R-Texas, heading the effort to scuttle or at least delay the labels, said they would cost grocery stores, meatpackers and others processors at least $1.9 billion the first year, based on preliminary Agriculture Department estimates. He predicted consumers would experience “sticker shock” once the costs were passed through.

“If you’re a domestic producer of beef or pork, you are going to have to comply with an enormous amount of record keeping, a great deal of cost,” said House Agriculture Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.

The Bush administration agreed, saying in a White House statement Monday that the question is a marketing rather than food safety issue and should be studied more before the government starts requiring the labels.

Supporters of the labeling requirements disagreed, saying the labels could have helped officials quickly trace cattle linked to a cow infected with mad cow disease in Canada. At a minimum, they say, shoppers would be armed with more information about what they were buying.

“This is a basic consumer-right-to-know issue,” said Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio. “We have to know where our meat comes from.”

While opposed by the leading livestock producers groups such as the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the National Pork Producers Council, the labels are supported by the American Farm Bureau and the National Farmers Union.

“At a time when much of American agriculture is flat on its back, we need the chance to say America matters to us and America matters to the consumer,” said Republican Rep. Dennis Rehberg, who operates a small cattle ranch in Montana.

In other areas, the bill would reduce by $872 million what Congress appropriated last year for running the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration. It also would omit the $1 million that President Bush sought to pay for Agriculture Department audits of the nation’s top four beef packers: Tyson Foods Inc., which owns IBP; Cargill; Swift & Co. and Farmland Meats.

In addition, it would devote $4.6 billion, $181 million less than Bush sought, for the WIC nutrition program covering 7.6 million low-income pregnant and breast-feeding women and their children. The bill would provide $4.7 billion to improve rural electric and telephone lines, $911 million less than this year, and $3.39 billion for farm credit loans, $551 million below this year.