5-28 IAT Meat Labels

 USDA wants to beef up labels on meat:

Quoting directly from the Casper Star Tribune Mexico and Canada are pushing the United States to eliminate country-of-origin labeling. The four-year-old label requirement tells consumers whether the meat is a product of the United States, Mexico or Canada. The two neighboring nations are leading trade partners with the U.S. for beef. They say the labels discriminate against their products. Here’s Wyatt  Prescott from Idaho Cattleman’s Association: “They are concerned from the trade perspective. Our number one and two customers in the United States who buy our product is Canada and then Mexico. That is both in dollar sales and volume but at the same token we are also buying a lot of product from them. We have a large customer base for the type of beef that they produce and we are able to swap back and forth in that flow. The big COOL dispute that has come across, originally they filed a suit and the WTO had agreed that mandatory COOL labeling is a violation of NAFTA. What the Mexicans and Canadians are showing is that there is harm being done to their trade because of this mandatory label.”

They also say a U.S. proposal to enhance labeling would only exacerbate the problem. The proposed labels would include information regarding where animals were born, raised and slaughtered.