Pork: Is it time for a Canadian version of COOL?

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

U.S. country-of-origin labelling has hammered Canadian exports of pork. But the industry is divided on whether to respond with voluntary labelling or to adopt a mirror of the U.S. legislation in self-defence

by DON STONEMAN

Rising imports of pork from the United States, the same country that brought in a law crippling trade in pigs going there, have brought retail meat labelling to the forefront as an issue. Expect contention over this at Ontario Pork's annual meeting in April.

The Perth County Pork Producers Association passed a resolution last August urging Ontario Pork to push federal and provincial governments "to force a mandatory Country-of-Origin label on all products, no matter where they come from."

Its author, Perth County pork producer Clare Schlegel, travelled the world when chair of the Canadian Pork Council, the national producer organization. In Japan and in the United Kingdom, he says, domestically produced and imported meats are segregated and clearly identified by the country they came from. He wants to see Canadian meat marketed that way in Canada.

In the United States, a controversial law known as Country-of-Origin Labelling (COOL), in force since 2008, has challenged – and some say crippled – exporters who have developed arrangements with either packers or other producers in the United States.

Canadian producers charge that the requirement that a complex set of labels be applied to meat from animals born and raised either here or in the United States has made retailers and packers reluctant to contract to buy pigs from Canada. Export numbers have fallen dramatically. (See Figure 1.)

The Canadian pork industry views country-of-origin labelling as a non-tariff barrier because it interferes with the flow of pigs and a marketplace that had previously been established.

Last fall, Canada and Mexico asked a World Trade Organization (WTO) panel to review how U.S. country-of-origin labelling laws are damaging their meat exports.

A decision is expected in late summer or early fall.

What to do in the meantime is a quandary for Ontario Pork and other organizations representing affected farmers. While pig numbers going to the United States have fallen, meat imports from that country have risen to as high as 25 per cent of the pork consumed in Ontario. Schlegel and other producers complain consumers can't tell where their meat comes from.

The Perth County resolution challenges Ontario Pork's current published position, which is that "Ontario Pork is supportive of voluntary labelling and as a member of the Canadian Pork Council is supportive of the WTO challenge currently underway against the United States' Country-of-Origin Labelling law as it violates WTO rules. At this time, to pursue mandatory labelling at home would be contradictory to efforts to have it removed in the United States."

In spite of that, Schlegel can't think of a single reason why Canada doesn't have its own version of COOL.

"I find it very difficult for anyone to argue that consumers shouldn't have the right to know where their food comes from," Schlegel admits. "It seems to me to be a very fundamental right and principle. I'm not sure why, in Canada, we tend to take the Boy Scout approach while the rest of the world is clearly giving their consumers a choice to buy local with clarity."

Schlegel's "boy scout" comment echoes a consultant's report commissioned by the Canadian Pork Council and produced by GIRA, based in Paris, France. "GIRA believes that Canadian hog producers owe it to themselves to defend themselves at least by ensuring that the rules are the same for everyone."

GIRA reports that Canadian imports of American pork have grown at 13 per cent per annum since 2000. "They are said to be 10 per cent to 25 per cent cheaper than the equivalent Canadian product."

But what would be the benefit? High feed costs that aren't passed along to consumers and the effects of a Canadian currency close to par with the United States are bigger economic issues, but aren't addressable, Schlegel says. He admits that telling consumers where meat on store shelves came from "is not a $10 a pig solution. It's a $1-2 a pig solution to make a sustainable hog industry."

And he acknowledges that "the grocer won't like it. It makes it more difficult to merchandise meat."

On the other side, Curtiss Littlejohn, Ontario Pork's past chair and current representative on the Canadian Pork Council, favours voluntary labelling, and says federal regulations to identify domestically produced pork are already there, if the Canadian Food Inspection Agency would only enforce them. He says the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is "complaint driven." If consumers don't complain, they won't react. Perhaps the law needs to be amended to make it a more visible sign."

He adds that "if we lose the COOL challenge, I believe we need to do the same thing to U.S. product coming in here . . . mirror their law."

Karl Kynoch, chairman of the Manitoba Pork Council, says producers are telling him they want equivalent laws if Canada loses its WTO challenge against the United States. Their preference is to put things back the way they were, Kynoch says.

Ron Doering, an Ottawa-based food lawyer, throws the problem into the lap of the federal regulator, the CFIA, of which he was president from 1997 to 2002. "The problem the pork producers have is not so much what the law is but a failure to implement it."

Of the CFIA, he says: "they react to complaints but, by the time the complaint has been lodged and the investigation completed, the damage has been done."

Better Farming tried for several days to get the CFIA to respond specifically to the charges made by Doering, but was unable to arrange for an interview with the current acting president of the federal regulator.

Food labelling has been a prickly issue for the CFIA. Regulations were changed following a controversial episode of the CBC TV's "Marketplace" in 2007 and a subsequent hearing in front of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture.

A column by Doering published in Food In Canada, a food industry magazine, says the television reports and subsequent debates were "one sided" and launched "ill-informed" newspaper editorials.

A resulting rule that required 98 per cent of a food to be from Canada in order to be labelled Product of Canada, he says, demonstrated how complicated it was to say something was a product of Canada. "By creating a 98 per cent rule, they actually created complexities" for companies, and some farm groups have since asked that those regulations be put on hold.

Jim Laws, executive director of the Canada Meat Council, says that the 98 per cent rule disrupted the business model of Delft Blue, the veal producer based in Cambridge, Ontario. It has farms and processing on both sides of the border and feeds some calves purchased in the United States, so determining which meat came entirely from Canada is difficult. Laws points also to unintended consequences for domestic poultry, and dairy producers. The poultry industry uses day-old chicks imported from hatcheries across the border, and ice cream with 10 or more per cent sugar content can't be called a product of Canada even if it is made with Canadian-sourced milk.

Tom Baker, director, food safety and animal heath division, Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, says most provincial regulations for meat follow the federal rules. Provincially inspected meats must be labelled in accordance with the federal Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, and the federal Food and Drug Act, says Brent Ross, spokesman for the ministry.

The pork industry should look to the Beef Information Centre's domestic marketing efforts, says the meat council's Laws. "They have a really strong generic beef promotion program."

Laws finds pork incredibly cheap.

"I feel so terrible sometimes going to a store and paying so little. Having an opportunity to make sure it is Canadian is a good idea." BF