The United States has used its right to temporarily block
Canada’s appeal against its mandatory Country of Origin Labeling (M-COOL)
regulations.
Canada will try again in two weeks to ask the World Trade
Organization (WTO) to set up a compliance panel to determine whether the
measures the U.S. proposed on May 23 bring it into compliance with WTO
standards.
The U.S. will have no right to block the second request.
The original M-COOL regulations, which went into effect in
2008, prompted U.S. packing plants to discount the prices they were willing to
pay for Canadian and Mexican cattle and hogs.
That’s because they had to keep them separate so they could
identify the meat so shoppers in stores would know it was imported from Canada
and Mexico.
The World Trade Organization agreed with Mexico and Canada
that this was an illegal trade barrier and gave the U.S. a deadline of this
spring to make corrections.
The corrections the U.S. proposes are even worse than the
original M-COOL regulations, say Mexico and Canada.
For example, now all meat that’s imported must carry more
detailed labels saying where the animal was born, raised and slaughtered.
The new regulations also require labeling when imported
muscle meat is mingled with meat from animals born, raised and slaughtered in
the U.S. – for example, hamburger.
The Canadian Cattlemen’s Association estimates that the
original M-COOL resulted in an immediate discount of $25 to $40 per head of
Canadian cattle. It estimates the discount under the proposed regulations would
increase to $90 to $100 per head.
The Canadian Pork Council commissioned a study which
estimated that M-COOL has cost Canadian hog producers $1 billion per year lost
exports and price discounts.
