Made in the U.S.A.

Dar

rell Wood is proud of his cows — and he wants us to know it. As they chomp through the bitterbrush of California's high desert, their ears waggle a plastic ID tag adorned with a tiny American flag. And when steaks from Wood's 1,500 Angus are sold in markets out West, they sport a bold red-white-and-blue label: BORN & RAISED IN THE USA. "American ranchers raise the safest and best-quality cattle in the world," says Wood, a fifth-generation cattleman. "Consumers deserve to know where their meat comes from."

Six years ago, Wood, 49, was deeply in debt as

prices for U.S. cattle plunged, squeezed by foreign imports and pressure from big meatpackers. He sold off part of his land and took a second job as a car salesman. "It was slow death," he recalls. "I couldn't offer my kids a life in ranching." But today, together with a handful of other California cattlemen, he sells his certified American beef to specialty grocers and restaurants at a premium. Says Wood, scattering jackrabbits as he steers his pickup past neatly fenced meadows: "Now I feel more confident of the future."

Ranchers such as the Wood family, along with fishermen, and fruit and vegetable growers, are spurring a movement to change the way consumers shop for food. While imports have doubled in a decade, swelling to 13% of the U.S. diet, most Americans have no idea where their produce originates. T shirts and TVs are required to carry labels — but not T-bones. Only shipping containers must disclose the source of most raw agricultural products: once beef is sliced into stew meat, or apples are tumbled into display bins, the information is rarely passed on to customers. That suits the giant slaughterhouses, wholesalers and grocery chains, which earn higher profits on cheaper imports. But U.S. farmers, claiming they lose an advantage with buyers who may be worried about mad-cow disease from Canadian beef or hepatitis A from Mexican vegetables, are fighting for laws to require that food be labeled with its country of origin. In surveys, 80% of consumers say they prefer to buy American. "Meat bears a USDA-inspected sticker, but that doesn't mean it is American," says rancher Carolyn Carey, who trademarked the Born & Raised in the USA label.

The battle over labeling is raging in Congress among different factions of the food industry, some helped and others hurt by increased imports. Two years ago, farmers and ranchers, allied with consumer groups, won the day, and a new federal law set a deadline of Sept. 30, 2004, for retailers to identify the national origin of meat, fish, fruits, vegetables and peanuts. But meatpackers and grocers, backed by the Bush Administration, claimed that country-of-origin labeling, known as COOL, amounted to protectionism, and they waged an aggressive campaign against the law. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued complex regulations — requiring layers of record keeping and third-party audits — that further galvanized opposition. Last January a measure postponing the law's effect until 2006 was slipped into an omnibus funding bill. The exception: fish, which must be labeled by September, thanks to the salmon fishermen's patron, Alaska Republican Senator Ted Stevens.

Senate minority leader Tom Daschle, attuned to ranchers in his home state of South Dakota, is pushing a bill to reinstate this year's across-the-board deadline. The law, he says, "enables Americans to perform a simple but significant act of patriotism every time they visit the grocery store." On the other side, Representative Charles Stenholm, a Democrat from Texas, mindful of Lone Star State feedlots that import Mexican cows, is co-sponsoring legislation to jettison mandatory labeling in favor of a voluntary system. That bill is backed by the four processors — Tyson Foods, Swift & Co., Cargill and National Beef Packing Co.--that control 81% of the nation's cattle market. They argue that foreign governments could retaliate for any labeling law by blocking American produce. "We do not need to jeopardize our access to foreign markets by adopting such protectionist policies," Tyson lobbyist Sara Lilygren recently e-mailed Senate staff members.