Facing the prospect of damaging trade sanctions,
the Obama administration is hustling to bring U.S. meat-labeling rules into
compliance with international standards.
But the American meat and cattle industry is sharply divided about the path
forward.
The White House’s Office of Management and Budget is now weighing proposed
regulations designed to resolve last year’s finding by the World Trade
Organization (WTO) that U.S. rules give American meat products an unfair
advantage over those from Canada and Mexico.
Inaction by the federal government would clear the way for those nations — the
United States’s top two meat trading partners — to impose retaliatory tariffs
that would inflict pain on American meat producers and packers. “This would be an incredible hit to our industry,” said Colin Woodall, vice
president of government affairs for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association
(NCBA.) At issue are federal
country-of-origin labeling rules that became mandatory in the United States in
2009, after years of debate. Known as COOL, the program is meant to give
consumers more information about the food they eat by requiring labels on
packaging that show where certain cuts of meat came from. The NCBA would just as soon do away with the labels, and said Congress — not
the administration — should act to resolve the issue. Proponents of the COOL
policy — farm and cattle industry groups, along with consumer watchdogs — argue
the WTO ruling does not altogether ban labeling. Rather, they contend that the
adjustments to the current regulation would remedy the issue, while allowing
COOL to continue...more
Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
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