Monday, October 27, 2014

WTO Sides with México and Canada

Last week the World Trade Organization (WTO), as expected, ruled on the side of Canada and México in the ongoing battle over the U.S. mandatory Country-of-Origin-Labeling (COOL) law. In its ruling the WTO said some COOL requirements treat Canadian and Mexican livestock less favorably than U.S. livestock.
In 2009 the WTO ruled that certain COOL requirements discriminated against foreign livestock and gave the United States a May 2013 deadline to comply with its findings.
The U.S. removed the “Mixed Labeling” and stated new labels had to show the origin of each step, i.e., born, raised, and slaughtered. So in an example of where cattle was born and raised in Canada, then imported into the U.S. the label must now read, “Born and raised in Canada, slaughtered in U.S.”
This meant cattle from each country had to be kept segregated during each step of the harvesting process.
Specifically, the October 20 ruling says the “compliance panel concluded that the amended COOL measure increases the original COOL measure’s detrimental impact on the competitive opportunities of imported livestock in the U.S. market, because it necessitates increased segregation of meat and livestock according to origin; entails a higher recordkeeping burden; and increases the original COOL measure’s incentive to choose domestic over imported livestock.”
Canada and México have threatened to retaliate in the form of tariffs being placed on U.S. products headed to their countries. While México has not yet released its list of products, the targeted list from Canada includes not only live cattle and hogs and meat products but also fresh fruits, grains, pasta, bread and other pastries, wine, ketchup, certain metals, jewelry, mattresses and more.
(from Drovers Cattle Network)

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