United States Agriculture Secretary Sonny Purdue said this week that County of Origin Labelling (COOL) might return in the United States, only this time voluntary.
Mandatory country-of-origin labels (COOL) are “not going to happen unless we want to do a billion-dollar litigation damage with Mexico and Canada,” he said when appearing before the House of Representatives Agriculture Committee.
In response to a legislator’s question, he said his department is “trying to thread the needle honestly, with transparency, so the consumer knows what they get and [we] help the producer feel they get value for cattle that have been grown and processed” in the U.S.
” An option might be a voluntary label that identifies beef as being “slaughtered and processed” in America,’ he said.
The Ranchers-Cattlemen’s Action Legal Fund has never given up lobbying for nmandatory COOL, despite expensive losses when Canada and Mexico successfully filed challenges with the World Trade Organization.
Recently it has been lobbying against a resumption of beef imports from Brazil and filed court action against meat packers, charging price-fixing, and against the U.S. Department of Agriculture over levies used to fund state-level beef organizations.
It also successfully sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture over mandating the use of RFID tags for traceability.
