Posted January 6, 2016
After more than a decade battle, Congress repealed a Country
of Origin Labeling Law (COOL) in December, according to a NBC News article
available here.
The Capital Press also published an article available here
and the Chicago Tribune here.
Lawmakers
said they had no choice but to get rid of the labels after the World Trade
Organization repeatedly ruled against them. The WTO recently authorized Canada
and Mexico, which had challenged the law, to begin more than $1 billion in
economic retaliation against the United States.
The COOL
repeal has been a growing topic in livestock circles for several years and more
recently when the World Trade Organization (WTO) sanctioned $1 billion in
retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports by Canada and Mexico, according to Capital
Press.
The
dispute resulted in four WTO rulings against the U.S. that were found to be in
violation of trade obligations by COOL’s discrimination against cattle and hogs
imported from Canada and cattle from Mexico.
Representatives
of industrial meatpacking and processing stated that they didn't want to stop Americans
from knowing the origins of their meat, but claim that there are other ways to
find out, according to the Chicago
Tribune.
"If
meat comes from another country direct to retail it must be labeled from that
country," says Eric Mittenthal of the North American Meat Institute.
"That has long been the law. Otherwise if it's processed in a U.S.
facility under (Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service)
inspection it is marked as such. If companies decide to offer more detail they
may, but we believe that should be voluntary so that consumers may be the
ultimate judge of what they value."
The issue
is expected to come up again in 2016, with Vermont set to require labeling on
genetically modified food this summer, according to NBC
News.
The day
the spending bill passed, Vilsack said he would try to help Congress come up
with a middle ground on labeling of engineered foods "in a way that
doesn't create significant market disruption, while at the same time
recognizing consumers' need to know and right to know basic information."
For more information on Country of Origin Labeling, please
visit the National Agricultural Law Center’s website here.
