Proposed amendments to the Country-of-Origin Labelling (COOL) law in the U.S. aren't sitting so coolly with Canadians.
Last week two U.S. senators proposed a bill that would ammend COOL legislation, which currently requires retailers to label where fresh-meat products, such as beef and pork, were raised, slaughtered, and processed. The new proposition would replace that with voluntary labelling, so American producers would have the option to put "product of U.S.A." labels on their meat. They say this is similar to what Canadians already do.
The Canadian government disagrees.
"[This] proposal in no way reflects Canada's voluntary labelling regime - any suggestion of this is blatantly false," said federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz in statement Thursday. "Should the U.S. move forward with their short-sighted proposal, Canada will have no choice but to impose billions of dollars of retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports."
He went on to say this voluntary system would continue "the segregation of and discrimination against Canadian cattle and hogs," which already exists under the current law.
In May, the World Trade Organization ruled that American COOL legislation violated international trade agreements. Canada then requested approval to impose over $3 billion in retaliatory tariffs.
The Canadian Cattlemen's Association (CCA) also wants the U.S. to repeal COOL. They say the proposed voluntary system wouldn't fix segregation problems. However, they are also concerned about the possibility of tariffs.
"If there is 100 per cent tariff on pork or beef, it would literally stop north/south trade for a while," says Dave Solverson, president of the CCA. "[We] understand that there will be some form of labeling when this all done, but we want to make sure that it is truly voluntary and that there is no chance for segregation. The whole matter of the WTO case was on the fact that the animals were segregated before processing."
Source : PortageOnline