Attention, grocery shoppers: You'll soon know the nationality of your steak, potatoes and kumquats.

A federal law that takes effect Tuesday will require supermarkets and other big food retailers to label or otherwise display the country of origin for meat, produce and certain kinds of nuts. A number of foods will be exempt, including processed foods like breaded chicken or packages of mixed vegetables. Still, the labeling rule is welcome news for consumers who base their decisions in part on where foods were raised or grown.

''Where possible, we like to buy items from the U.S. because they're fresher,'' said Norman Carl, a 72-year-old retiree, while shopping recently at a Whole Foods Market in Deerfield, Ill.

The labeling rule, included in the 2008 Farm Bill passed this summer, applies to products sold in grocery stores and mass-merchandise outlets. It effectively exempts small food outlets and such places as butcher shops, restaurants and school cafeterias. Labels will only be required at retailers that sell at least $230,000 of fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables annually.

Consumer-advocacy groups have pushed for origin labeling for years, saying it can help shoppers avoid food from countries with lax safety regulations. Indeed, a rash of recent food scares seem to have raised consumers' awareness about where their food comes from.

Gary Ashford, a 62-year-old Los Gatos, Calif., technology-industry executive, says he avoids meat raised in countries that have been cited for food-safety problems.

''I'll be on the watch for any imported meats, except for trusted sources, such as New Zealand,'' he says.

Consumers might not see all labels in place this week. Meat, nuts and produce that were produced or packaged before Sept. 30 do not have to be labeled with country-of-origin information. Food producers will have a six-month grace period to comply with the regulations. After that, producers that don't properly label their goods will be subject to fines of $1,000 per violation.

Still, many retailers and suppliers are aiming to meet the labeling deadline. Poultry producers that haven't yet gotten new packaging printed will slap stickers on packages with the name of the country of origin, says Bill Roenigk, senior vice president and chief economist at the National Chicken Council. Most will carry a U.S.A. label, because more than 99 percent of the chicken sold in this country is hatched here, he says. The rest is imported mainly from Canada and a small amount from Chile.

The new labeling rules apply to meat from cows, lambs, chickens, pigs and goats, as well as to fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables, ginseng, macadamia nuts, pecans and peanuts.

However, the labels won't apply to meat or produce that has been cooked or processed, such as corned beef and sausage. Plain ground beef must carry a label, but if a package contains a blend of meats from several countries, the rules don't require the countries to be listed in order of the percentage of food they contributed. A salad package containing different kinds of leaf lettuce will have to be labeled, but a package containing different kinds of vegetables, such as peas and carrots, won't.

Such exemptions limit the labeling rule's benefit to shoppers, consumer advocates say. ''It's not going to be a panacea for consumers, but it's one step forward in creating accountability in the food supply,'' says Joseph Mendelson, legal director for the Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit public interest group in Washington.

Consumer-advocacy groups and food-industry associations underline that country-of-origin labeling won't help ensure food safety.

''While it's tempting to demonize food from other places, we've seen over the years that there are problems with the domestic food supply as well,'' says Sarah Klein, an attorney in the food-safety program at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit consumer-advocacy group.

Eventually, she says, the group would like to see labeling that shows the farm or ranch where food originated.

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