Ranchers on Monday sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture, seeking to force meat to again be labeled if it's produced in other countries and imported to the United States.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Spokane, seeks to overturn a March 2016 decision by the Department of Agriculture to revoke regulations requiring imported meat products to be labeled with their country of origin. That change allowed imported meat to be sold as U.S. products, the lawsuit said.
"Consumers understandably want to know where their food comes from," said David Muraskin of Washington, D.C., an attorney for Public Justice, which filed the lawsuit. "With this suit, we're fighting policies that put multinational corporations ahead of domestic producers and shroud the origins of our food supply in secrecy."
Between 2009 and 2016, the USDA required country-of-origin labeling on meat.
The lawsuit said the change violated the nation's Meat Inspection Act, which required that slaughtered meat from other countries be clearly marked.
The Department of Agriculture on Monday declined to comment on a matter that is in litigation.
The lawsuit was brought by the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America, the nation's largest group of independent cattle producers, and the Cattle Producers of Washington...mor
The complaint is embedded below
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8Yd5M8kgeNtUU5VTExhTTFCSUk/view?usp=sharing
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3 comments:
Didn't we lose our fight in world court on this? And that was the reason the rules were recinded? Something about billions and billions of punitive tarrifs that were authorized if we didn't mind our ways?
Congress included COOL repeal in the $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill after the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled Canada and Mexico could begin imposing more than $1 billion in tariffs on U.S. products to punish it for the harm the labeling requirements were doing to them.
But read the Complaint. They are saying the new rules don't comply with the Meat Inspection or the Tariff Act of 1930.
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