11-25 IAN Tyson COOL
Recently, a company spokesman for Tyson Foods Inc said it halted purchases of slaughter-ready cattle from Canada due to higher costs associated with mandatory country-of-origin (COOL) labeling.US Sec. of agriculture Tom Vilsack weighed in on this issue. “Tyson’s got to make decisions based on the company’s best positioned but frankly at USDA we are under an obligation, a congressional direction and mandate to essentially create a labeling program. We got instructions from the WTO that our labeling program was authorized and we could label but they suggested that it needed to be a bit more specific and a bit more accurate in terms of processing and slaughter and raising, and that is what we have attempted to do. We think we have complied with the WTO instructions and directives, we think we have complied with the Congressional mandate. If folks don’t like the mandate, if they don’t like the idea of labeling or they want a label that is much more generic, and obviously what they are to be doing is going to Congress and having Congress change the directive to us but as long as Congress continues to direct us to do what we are doing and we believe we have complied with the WTO responsibilities, we are going to continue along those lines.”
