Country Of Origin Labeling (COOL)
The Obama administration visited Canada recently. It turns out that the Bush Administration had tried to foster country of origin labeling on certain food products in its final days but Canada joined Mexico in protesting the labeling efforts in a complaint to the World Trade Organization. Then, the Obama administration indicated that there were announcements set to be made and suddenly cancelled the announcements over some issues. Some of the law's leading opponents have been grocery stores and large meatpacking companies involved in getting products to supermarkets. It has been thought that many of these businesses mix U.S. and Mexican beef.
However, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told meat industry leaders earlier last week that the administration would go ahead and call for stricter labels on fresh meat and other foods that would show where an animal was born, raised and slaughtered.
Apparently this brought some relief to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. Here’s spokesman Colin Woodall. “We’ve been trying to implement this now for almost 6 months and there’s always been that nagging issue behind us saying what are the changes gonna be and now that we know there aren’t going to be very many changes, it’s going to be based on January 15th, we can get this thing implemented, get the ball rolling, and truly understand what country of origin labeling means, not only for the consumer, but more importantly for those producers out there.”
