After years-long trade disputes and billions of dollars in losses to Canada's pork and beef sectors, mandatory Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) is officially been abolished in the U.S.
Friday afternoon, U.S. President Barack Obama signed a huge year-end spending bill, which included provisions to repeal COOL on beef and pork. This came after votes in earlier in the day by the House of Representatives and the Senate, which passed the bill 316-113 and 65-33, respectively.
"The omnibus bill repealed the COOL requirements for muscle cuts of beef and pork, and ground beef and pork. Effective immediately, USDA is not enforcing the COOL requirements for muscle cut and ground beef and pork outlined in the January 2009 and May 2013 final rules," says U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in a statement from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
The USDA says it will be amending the COOL regulations as expeditiously as possible to reflect the repeal of the beef and pork provisions.
First introduced in 2009, COOL legislation required meat to be labeled with where the animals was born, raised, and slaughtered, which required segregation between Canadian and American livestock in U.S. processing facilities, costing extra dollars to the supply chain. Earlier this year, the World Trade Organization ruled these labeling laws violated international trade commitments, and gave Canada and Mexico approval on $1 billion in annual retaliatory tariffs if the legislation was not repealed.
Source : SteinbachOnline