Canadian producers hope COOL makes leaders' agenda

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

© AgMedia Inc.

by SUSAN MANN

Overly restrictive Country of Origin Labeling rules will hurt small American hog and beef farmers the same as Canadians, says Canadian Pork Council spokesman Gary Stordy.

“The American farmers depend on Canadian feeder pigs and cattle for their production,” he says.

The Council and the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association are hoping Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) will be on the agenda Thursday when U.S. President Barack Obama visits Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Ottawa. The two organizations advised Harper to encourage Obama to implement the final rules as announced last month. Currently there’s some uncertainly with the COOL rules.

The final regulation, announced in January, was supposed to be effective March 16. But the newly-elected Obama administration suspended all rule making when it took office last month.

Canadian Cattlemen’s Association spokesman John Masswohl says the Obama administration also took the “extraordinary step” of launching a review of all finalized but not yet fully implemented rules, including COOL. It’s possible these rules could be reopened for public comment.

This concerns the Canadian Cattlemen’s and it wants Harper to raise this issue with Obama and ask him to implement the final COOL rules as they were published. News reports have indicated that trade and the economy will dominate the agenda of talks between the two leaders.

Masswohl says the flexibility included in the final rule is important to Canada’s industry. “We have encouraged the Prime Minister to say that was a good example of what we can achieve by working together,” he adds. “The result that was achieved certainly was consistent with the G7 approach of recognizing that protectionism in the times that we’re in should be avoided at all costs.”

The Pork Council agrees. “We’re really hoping that the U.S. administration will give the rules as finalized a chance to work,” Stordy says.

The final COOL regulations would have been better for Canadian livestock farmers than the interim rules in place since last September. That’s because U.S. packers would have the same flexibility to use a mixed-origin label on animals imported directly for slaughter as they now have for other categories. Most of the animals going to the U.S. directly for slaughter are from Canada.

Under interim rules now in place, beef, pork and some other agricultural products have to be labeled with the country where the animal was born. This requires U.S. ranchers and meat packing companies to handle Canadian animals separately from U.S. ones with some packers refusing to accept Canadian cattle, while others would only process them on certain days and discount the price. Canadian Cattlemen’s estimates the industry here is losing $400-million annually because of COOL.

In December the Canadian government began the process of challenging the U.S. rules under World Trade Organization (WTO) procedures by requesting consultations with the U.S. government. The challenge was suspended once the final rules providing more labeling flexibility for U.S. packers were announced.

Canada is prepared to relaunch its complaint to the WTO if the U.S. doesn’t enact the amended rules, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz told reporters recently. BF