By Bruce Cochrane
The Canadian Meat Council remains hopeful the U.S. will avoid the prospects of retaliation by Canada and Mexico over U.S. Mandatory Country of Origin Labelling by repealing the legislation.
The World Trade Organization is scheduled to issue its ruling Monday on the final U.S. appeal of rulings that Mandatory Country of Origin Labelling violates U.S. international trade obligations.
A ruling in favor of Canada and Mexico will open the door for them to ask the WTO to authorize retaliatory tariffs on a host of U.S. products.
Ron Davidson, the director of international trade, government and media relations with the Canadian Meat Council, says the expectation, since it's been a series of wins since 2008, is that Canada and Mexico will be victorious.
Ron Davidson-Canadian Meat Council:
After that determination then normally Canada and Mexico would have the right to identify the damage which we believe is being done in our markets and to move towards retaliation.
Now of course at any time the U.S. could decide to repeal the legislation that's causing the prejudice to our exports and that is the ultimate goal.
Our first preference is not to retaliate.
Retaliate is a last potential to sort of act as a catalyst for a repeal of the legislation so if that would happen quickly that would be the best outcome.
The Canadian Meat Council's position from the beginning has been that countries should respect the international trade rules.
If all countries don't respect the international trade rules then we end up into a series of disputes and different countries taking different border actions and the international trading system is at risk.
Davidson says there is a rule out there, the U/.S. government has been found repeatedly to be in violation of that international obligation and the expectation of the Canadian meat industry is the U.S. will bring the legislation into conformity with its international obligations.
Source: Farmscape