WASHINGTON – It’s called country-of-origin labeling – COOL for short – and it’s the rare federal law that Western ranchers are welcoming with open arms.

”Our members want it,” said Bob Skinner, an Eastern Oregon rancher and president of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, in a Friday interview.

Still, Skinner said, there’s a division between ranchers and meat packers over the need for a COOL law – scheduled to go into effect on Oct. 1, 2004.

The law calls for a government-approved label for beef, fish and pork that would describe where the animal was born, raised and slaughtered. The law also carries especially tough rules for labels that designate meat from the United States.

Labels, under the law, will also show where peanuts and produce were harvested.

One glance at the meat freezer will show shoppers where the animals for individual steaks or pork chops were born and where they traveled before being slaughtered.

American ranchers, pointing to mad cow disease scares in Canada and Great Britain, believe consumers will want to buy meat they know has never crossed a U.S. border. The labels won’t apply to poultry.

The 2002 farm bill created the COOL regulations.

As a block, all members of Oregon’s congressional delegation voted for the bill, including Rep. Greg Walden.

”Congressman Walden has voted in favor of COOL in the past,” said Dallas Boyd, Walden’s press spokesman, on Friday. ”This is an issue that is of great importance to Oregon’s agricultural community and groups such as the Oregon Farm Bureau and the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association.”

While ranchers like Skinner are labeling’s biggest fans, the U. S. Department of Agriculture has been ambivalent about labeling standards, questioning whether consumers care where their food comes from. A recent study by the USDA’s Economic Research Service concluded that hardly any grocers bother to label products made in the United States because they don’t think such labels would help move the food off the shelves.

”Grocery items are not ablaze with country-of-origin labels,” the study noted, and ”some analysts argue that origin does not matter to U.S. consumers.”

In July, the House of Representatives, in separate legislation, voted to keep the rules from applying to meat products until 2005. That vote was a victory for meat producers and packers, who have argued that origin labels for each cut of meat would increase meat prices to the point that it might dampen consumer demand for domestic beef.

Lower prices, then, might make imported beef more attractive to the public, the opposition contended.

The measure is awaiting Senate action.

”Nobody really knows how consumers are going to react to these labels in the marketplace,” said Janet Riley, senior vice president of public affairs at the Washington, D.C.-based American Meat Institute, which represents meat packers.

”You’re gambling on how consumers will react, and what they’ll be willing to pay,” she said.

The lobbying group has made repealing the country-of-origin law a top priority, Riley said.

Skinner, of the Oregon cattlemen’s group, believes the labeling regulations will give American beef producers a much-needed boost by setting U.S.-produced beef cuts apart from lower-quality foreign products.

”We have to have some protection because we are not on a level playing field with the world,” Skinner said.

He said American ranchers deal with the costs of environmental and other regulations that ranchers in other countries don’t face.

The meat institute’s Riley, however, said the labeling law may be a violation of World Trade Organization rules.

”Our trading partners are very concerned about this,” she said. ”It really is an effort to restrict imports.”

When Congress returns from its August recess on Tuesday, people on both sides of the issue will be lobbying their representatives with an eye on the Senate debate.

”We think (COOL) needs to be repealed,” Riley said.

Skinner, meanwhile, said his group would be pressing Congress to keep the law intact. ”We can’t compete [without the labels], that’s all there is to it,” he said.

James Fisher can be reached at 202-661-0151 or at fisherjam@mac.com.