When Americans buy fresh, perishable food, we usually expect to know where much of it comes from. That’s due to an oft-contested law known as Country of Origin Labeling (COOL).

When the law was first codified as part of the 2002 farm bill, it required retailers—including most grocery stores, supermarkets, and club warehouse stores—to notify customers about the sources of a variety of foods.

Absent from that list are raw beef and pork—products that were part of the initial legislation. They were removed in December 2015, when Congress, as part of an omnibus budget bill, made a partial COOL repeal.

Colorado wants to revive COOL labeling for beef at the state level. Representative Kimmi Lewis and Senator Vicki Marble, both Republican, have introduced a General Assembly bill that would require all raw beef sold in the state to be marketed in stores as either American or imported. Under the “Beef Country of Origin Recognition System,” as the proposed amendment to the Colorado Food and Drug Act is named, that would come in the form of highly-visible placards that retailers would provide.

Read the source article on labeling imported beef by Sam Bloch at The New Food Economy