by SUSAN MANN
Canadian government and livestock industry representatives are disappointed the United States government has refused to change its mandatory Country of Origin Labelling law through the updated Farm Bill.
“By refusing to fix Country of Origin Labelling (COOL), the United States is effectively legislating its own citizens out of work and harming Canadian and American livestock producers alike by disrupting the highly integrated North American meat supply chain,” federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz and International Trade Minister Ed Fast say in a joint prepared statement.
Before Christmas, Canadian government and livestock groups were looking to American lawmakers to alter country of origin labelling in the U.S. Farm Bill, which is legislation governing United States Department of Agriculture programs. It’s renewed every five years. But negotiations on the Farm Bill concluded without any changes to the COOL legislation the American government implemented in November 2013 after the World Trade Organization ruled in July 2012 the original law doesn’t comply with the United States’ trade obligations. The original law was implemented in 2008.
The final Farm Bill passed in the House of Representatives by a vote of 251 to 166 this week. It’s slated to come up in the Senate for a vote early next week.
But John Masswohl, Canadian Cattlemen’s Association director of government and international relations, says “I don’t think it will have any trouble passing in the Senate.”
That means the American law will stay in place unaltered for now.
Masswohl agrees with Ritz and Fast that the American legislation, which requires meat to be labeled with details of where animals were born, raised and processed, will reduce jobs in the United States. “I was watching the State of the Union speech the other night and President Barack Obama seemed to express the view that he cared about American jobs but when they do things like this you really have to wonder if they do or not.”
Masswohl says “I really believed they were going to take the opportunity to fix this. We’ve always said there are different options. Our objective has been to eliminate the segregation that’s required. That’s the source of the discrimination” against livestock that isn’t born and raised in the United States.
“When you have to segregate it causes discounts to be in the marketplace,” he adds.
Ritz and Fast say the Canadian government’s position “remains that the changes made by the Untied States administration to mandatory COOL increase discrimination against North American producers and processors and hurt hard-working Canadians and Americans alike.”
It’s full steam ahead for Canada to change the mandatory COOL law at the WTO. Canadian Cattlemen’s says in a Jan. 27 press release the next step in that process is oral arguments before the WTO compliance panel the week of Feb. 18.
The WTO panel will rule on whether COOL complies with the United States’ trade obligations. “We’ll get a decision by probably late spring,” Masswohl says. “Then there will be an appeal and that will take us to the end of the year.”
It could be the first half of 2015 before Canada can slap retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods, such as beef, pork, cereals, baked goods, fresh fruit and many other items. The Canadian government has already published a list of U.S. goods that could be targeted for retaliatory tariffs. BF
Comments
Really, who are they kidding, it will never get to the point of putting tariffs on incoming beef,pork or any of those other goods and the reason is the US could hurt us far more with retaliatory tariffs, we would be the loser many times over in a US-Can trade war.COOL has been ongoing since 2008 and it looks like it will now continue despite the bold talk from some of our Agr leaders and politicians
The retaliatory tariffs would be WTO approved.
COOL has always been a calculated US response to our intransigence about supply management, and is exactly why Ontario Pork, at its 2013 annual general meeting, voted 68/13 to "urge government to place trade ahead of protectionism".
Let's put it this way - why, given how stupid Canadians continue to be about the trade-distorting effects of supply management, would the US be in any hurry to do anything about COOL?
Canadian hog farmers have figured out where the problem rests when it comes to COOL, and it's on this side of the border - why can't anyone else but our pork producers figure it out too? Could it be because of the desire to preserve obscenely-high quota values and the need by dairy and poultry farmers to continue to be financial bullies in the farm community?
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
U.S. livestock producer groups such as the National Pork Producer council have time and time again complained about the handouts Canadian pork gets. You don't suppose this might be part of why COOL exists eh? A lot the handouts are in the hard to trace forms such as NISA, or now AgriInvest plus CAIS now Agristability plus buyouts of barns only to be restarted under new names.
see: http://www.nppc.org/2012/06/stop-subsidizing-hog-production-nppc-asks-ca...
If you take the time to look a little closer, you will see that NPPC is a member of the group fighting the COOL legislation.
“You can’t argue that MCOOL distorts the hog markets then ignore the far greater impact of the Canadian subsidy programs,” Wolf said.
For good reason these folks aren't happy about getting dumped on. Also seems their corn gets dumped into Ontario but our corn users seem to think that is O.K.
Distortion? Yes...RMP for crops and livestock, agrinvest, agristability, ethanol subsidies/mandates, supply management, etc, etc.
Canadian agriculture is one big distortion!
Thankfully, Canadian farmers are beginning to see how distorted an industry can become when it becomes dependent on legislation, rather than sound economic principles, for its existence.
Indeed, it's not hard to understand why any rational young person would want to flee as far away from primary agriculture as possible.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Thanks for supporting the NPPPC position from the above link, "the National Pork Producers Council asked that Canada stop its hog subsidy programs before entering the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade talks. It pointed out that if similar programs existed in the United States, U.S. pork production would more than double in 10 years, adversely affecting the Canadian hog market." The U.S. beef producers are also ticked about the Canadian system of handouts to Canadian beef. Just saying as when some Canadian pork producers voted against supply management.
What we need is Equity With US Farmers .
I am sure some on here ( one in particular ) will come out agreeing with you but then the question will be why did he stick with agriculture for so long if it is so wrong and bad in this country . Do as I say not as I do comes to mind .
The distortions, the greed, the lack of care and consideration for other farmers, the lack of consideration for younger farmers, have always been with us, but it has definitely worsened over my farming career.
Had I known when I bought my first farm in 1973, that primary agriculture would degenerate into a fiercely-defended rural aristocracy, I'd have stayed in banking.
For example, dairy and poultry farmers refuse to see the problems they have created in the farm community in that they incomprehensibly believe supply management to be a "unique Canadian success story", even though the truth shows the exact opposite to be true.
In recent years, grains farmers have been no better, what with claiming, in direct contrast to basic economic principles, that ethanol doesn't harm livestock producers.
When it comes to equity with US farmers, it is, to paraphrase Dickens, "the best of times, the worst of times" - what with our dairy and poultry farmers absolutely better off than their US counterparts, while our grain farmers are absolutely worse off than their US counterparts - meaning, of course, that our grains farmers are absolutely worse off than our dairy and poultry farmers.
Yet those without quota, and especially younger farmers without quota, are supposed to grovel and scrape and let on that farmland selling at up to 50 times earnings, thanks to the incomes and purchasing power accruing solely because of 200% tariff barriers, is simply wonderful because it allows dairy and poultry farmers to be financial bullies in the farm community to their heart's content.
Therefore, equity with US farmers is a "red herring", and will be, as long as we don't have equity with Canadian farmers. Too many farmers have lulled themselves into believing we aren't the architects of our own misfortune - and that's also a big part of our collective idiocy about the fundamental decisions we steadfastly refuse to make.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Thanks for supporting the NPPPC position from the above link, "the National Pork Producers Council asked that Canada stop its hog subsidy programs before entering the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade talks. It pointed out that if similar programs existed in the United States, U.S. pork production would more than double in 10 years, adversely affecting the Canadian hog market." The U.S. beef producers are also ticked about the Canadian system of handouts to Canadian beef. So, are you suggesting Canadian Pork producers would suddenly give up all the support programs if supply management was gone?
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