COOL

National Farmers Union (NFU) President Roger Johnson issued the following statement after receiving news of the District Court of Appeals’ en banc decision on a challenge to enforcement of Country-of-Origin Labeling (COOL) by the multinational meatpackers and foreign competitors.  By a 9-2 majority, the panel upheld an earlier 3-judge panel decision to deny an appeal to halt the enforcement of the popular labeling law, passed in 2008.

 “NFU, and our broad coalition of consumer and producer organizations, have achieved yet another victory in our long battle to uphold the enforcement of the COOL regulation as modified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA).   This marks the third time that COOL has won in court. There is no need for this case to proceed. We had an interesting conversation. “Is it fair to say that a country that does not want to be recognized in terms of where their product is coming from is trying to hide something? You are certainly entitled to ask a question and I think it is a legitimate question if a country does not want to say that they produced meat that is for sale here in this country, it certainly raises the question as to what are the packers trying to hide here. I don’t think it’s the country itself, I think it is the industry that has become accustomed to sourcing animals from different parts of the world and co-mingling them and mixing them and passing them off as though they are US beef, let’s say, even though they may be of mixed origin. They prefer not to tell us that.