WTO seen putting chill on U.S. COOL

Claims that a new preliminary World Trade Organization ruling favours Canada's 2009 challenge of U.S. country-of-origin labelling (COOL) have popped up from all manner of sources -- just not from official Ottawa or Washington or the WTO itself. Sources reporting at least a partial victory for Canada's challenge include the Washington-based National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA), which on Thursday said a preliminary ruling had been handed down last Friday (May 20) to the parties involved. The NCBA, which has long been on record as opposing mandatory COOL, claims the ruling from the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body finds COOL requirements violate provisions of the WTO's agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT). The WTO body "ruled U.S. COOL requirements do not fulfill the stated U.S. objective of helping inform consumers of the origin of meat and, consequently, violate the TBT agreement," the NCBA said Thursday. "It is also very important to note that this ruling is very much preliminary and all of the details are not yet known," NCBA president Bill Donald said in the association's release. The NCBA said the WTO will "reportedly make the ruling public sometime in September," after which the U.S. government gets two months to decide whether to file an appeal...more