Canada says it will keep an eye on cattle and hog shipments to the United States to make sure that discriminatory U.S. practices are removed with the repeal of the mandatory county-of-origin labeling (COOL) law. Mandatory COOL, in effect since 2009, required packages of muscle cuts and ground meat to say where the animals were born, raised and slaughtered.
Congress voted on Friday to repeal COOL and President Obama quickly signed the $1.1 trillion government funding bill that included repeal. Before the end of the day, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced, “Effective immediately, USDA is not enforcing the COOL requirements for muscle cut and ground beef and pork outlined in the January 2009 and May 2013 final rules.”
“Today’s developments mean that Canada’s beef and pork industries will be able to compete on a level playing field. We look forward to the restoration of full access to the U.S. market for Canada’s beef and pork, benefitting our farmers and our economy,” said Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland and Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAuley in a statement. “Canada will actively monitor to ensure that the incentives to discriminate against Canadian cattle and hogs are quickly removed from the marketplace.”
Canada said COOL repeal reflected its “collaborative approach to our vital relationship with the United States and Mexico” and “the importance of the World Trade Organization as a dispute settlement body” — mild words for the long dispute between the North American neighbors that included four WTO rulings against COOL as a trade impediment and a judgment that Canada and Mexico could impose up to $1.01 billion in retaliatory tariffs on U.S. manufactured and agricultural goods. Canada and Mexico might have received WTO permission as early as today to impose the 100 tariffs.
The fruit of prairie populism, COOL was part of the 2002 farm bill and was voluntary for meat until the 2008 farm law made labeling mandatory. Cow-calf ranchers from the norther Plains, consumer groups and the National Farmers Union said COOL would distinguish U.S. products in the grocery store and fulfill a consumer’s right to know about food. Canada and Mexico challenged the law at WTO as a trade barrier. U.S. meatpackers and food makers, along with the largest cattle and pork groups, fought COOL as a costly bookkeeping nightmare.
“Cattle producers have had to bear the cost of this failed program for far too long,” said the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association in celebrating the repeal. NFU president Roger Johnson lamented that COOL was “wiped off the books” in a “backroom deal.”
COOL applies, with far less controversy, to poultry, lamb, goat and venison, seafood, fruits and vegetables, peanuts, pecans, macadamia nuts and ginseng. The poultry industry tried to get chicken meat included in the repeal language but failed.