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The Country of Origin Labeling law (COOL) will become effective on September 30, 2008. All Cool covered commodity, livestock, produce, fowl, fish, shellfish, nuts and peanuts will have a means of traceability records for the AMS USDA COOL Law. Retailers have to provide to consumers the country of origin, by a label on the package or be fined $1000.00 per item. These retail markets will not purchase products which are not compliant with the COOL law, and they can audit your records if you are producer/grower or a packer-shipper. Any person engaged in the business of supplying a covered commodity to a retailer, whether directly or indirectly, must maintain records to establish and identify the immediate previous source in the food chain.
The easiest way to survive an audit of grown, raised, processed in the USA is to have records and/or unique codes through a commercial database where the wholesalers and retailers can search product records for origin proof. The retail label will state whether their products are of domestic or international origin. Good news for the American producer, retailer, and consumer. ScoringAg has it all.
This means, that a code which is on the commodity from the producer will be transferred to another code, through the entire food chain, to the retailer, from ‘Field-to-Fork’. COOL will require the producer to start maintaining records, immediately! This law will enhance the consumer’s safety concerns and save agricultural industries millions of dollars from a commodity recalls. Take the recent Tomato and Pepper salmonella recalls for example, within seconds, traceback to the grower’s field and food-handlers would be determined and the recall would be limited to that packer or grower’s field, rather than the whole farm instead of the whole tomato and pepper industries taking the recall.
Last fall at a conference in Columbus, Ohio, McMaster Farms LLC of Columbiana, Ohio learned of the impending COOL law, for the first time. Since they grow and package 300 acres of fresh sweet corn, 150 acres of pumpkins, squash and other fall items; 1100 acres of field crops, and McMaster Farm Market, they were concerned about how to become compliant with COOL. Carrie McMaster researched her options, and discovered ScoringAg.com is the only database available which works for the requirements of the COOL law and can provide to the industry ‘Item-level Traceability’ for handling McMaster Farms LLC’s risk management.
ScoringAg sales representative, Janet Hoopes met with McMaster Farms, assisting in setting up the database with ScoringAg. Vernon Hills, Illinois - based Zebra Technologies Corporation and Mike Jones of BarCode ID Systems of Cleveland, OH, have assisted in setting up a barcode printing and labeling system, so they will be compliant with the COOL law, and FDA Bio-Terrorism Item-Level Traceability Law. McMaster Farms are busy with harvest and are assured they are ready for COOL as they can enter their GAP’s, BMP’s, and their site certification records through ScoringAg all while using the traceback codes of ScoringAg.
Other database systems loose traceback capabilities at the processing and wholesaling areas and have to start a new code system that becomes hard to follow when paper records are used. Producers now know where to turn to be compliant with COOL, where their records are secure from farm fires, floods, and computer viruses; no expensive software program purchased, and it is simple to enter and maintain farm records for the COOL law all with ScoringAg.
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wkanitz[.]scoringsystem.com 
