Canada Responds

Canada Responds. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

Last Friday - the Canadian Government expressed its disappointment with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Mandatory Country-of-Origin Labeling rule submitted to the World Trade Organization. Canada confirmed it’s ready to move forward with the next phase of the WTO dispute settlement process on the rule - prepared with a list of products for possible retaliatory tariffs - including beef, pork and chicken among other things. National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Vice President of Government Relations Colin Woodall says U.S. cattlemen and women expected this action by the Canadian Government.

WOODALL: Fortunately we have known this is in the mix for quite some time. In fact when you go back to the summer of 2007 when we were actually negotiating the language that ended up being Country of Origin Labeling, we even threw out then to members of the committee and to the other groups that this was a potential outcome. And here we are now five years later seeing that come to fruition.
 
Woodall says NCBA’s members oppose the Mandatory COOL program because of what it will do to the U.S. beef industry’s trade relationship with two of its biggest export markets.

WOODALL: Here we have a situation where this labeling has not provided any value to our customer. All it has done is add cost to all segments of the beef industry and that’s an unfortunate situation for a program that is really just about marketing. Country of Origin Labeling does nothing for food safety, it’s only about marketing.
 
That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.