In late 2015, looking to avoid a threatened $1 billion in retaliatory tariffs, Congress repealed a requirement that packages of beef and pork sold in the United States say where the animals were born, raised, and slaughtered. Now the activist ranchers’ group R-CALF has filed suit in federal court in Spokane, Wash., to reinstate the labels.
The lawsuit says the Meat Inspection Act requires meat that is slaughtered in other countries and then imported into the United States to carry a country-of-origin label. “Under current USDA rules, however, multinational companies can sell meat raised and slaughtered abroad with a ‘Product of USA’ label alongside truly domestic products raised by U.S. ranchers,” said R-CALF. The group said consumers should be able to buy domestic meat if they want it, but that the labeling system denies them the clear and reliable information they need when making purchases.
Canada and Mexico won a WTO challenge to the U.S. label law as well as permission to levy retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods if the labeling requirement was not negated. The WTO ruled that the law was a trade barrier in disguise and that it discouraged cross-border trade in livestock and meat. U.S. meatpackers and the largest cattle and hog groups also opposed the label law, which they saw as an expensive bookkeeping headache.