Even before the recent tainted-food scares involving imports from China made headlines, many Americans were growing concerned about where their food was coming from. The steady increase of imports found in U.S. grocery stores raises issues about the various foreign countries' standards for food safety, their rules about chemical application and the thoroughness of inspections. For some consumers, the concerns go even further — to issues of the treatment of foreign food workers to the environmental impact of cheaper foreign foods and transporting foods halfway around the world.

One of the most basic bits of information that many consumers want to know about the food they buy is where it comes from. Though there is no guarantee that domestically produced food is safer than foods imported from foreign countries, consumers still deserve to know the route their food is taking to get to their table.

The 2002 Farm Bill included a country-of-origin labeling (COOL)requirement for meat, seafood and produce. But special-interest opponents to those rules pressured lawmakers in a then-Republican-controlled Congress to delay implementation of full labeling, now slated for 2008. At this point, only fish is labeled with its country of origin.

Lobbying efforts to gut the COOL provisions came from large U.S. food producers, including ConAgra Foods, the Food Marketing Institute and National Cattlemen's Beef Association. Among the largest contributors of lobbying money to defeat country-of-origin labeling was Wal-Mart, the nation's largest grocery operation and a major importer from China.

Smaller food producers generally support country-of-origin labeling because they are less likely to use imported products than their giant competitors.

Simply labeling food with its country of origin is not a solution to the problem of tainted food causing harm to American consumers. Much more needs to be done. And, for increasing numbers of Americans, that means favoring locally or regionally grown or produced food whenever possible.

The recent news reports of tainted pet food from China causing deaths of dogs and cats was a wake-up call for many Americans. The global economy has resulted in ingredients from a variety of different countries being found in many processed foods made by large American companies.

Further complicating the food safety issue is the fact that the federal Food and Drug Administration reports that it inspects only about 1 percent of imported foods.

However limited its value might be in terms of a food-safety indicator, country-of-origin labeling should be required by law — as the 2002 Farm Bill mandated.

With Congress now working on the next version of the Farm Bill, which is renewed every five years, COOL provisions passed in 2002 should be required for all imported foods, and that should be extended to include ingredients in processed foods.

News reports from Washington last week suggest that there might be some easing of the record-keeping burden that some U.S. food producers had complained about, but it does appear that country-of-origin labeling for food is finally coming to America's grocery stores.

COOL might not be the answer to the food-safety problem, but it can be a part of the solution.