Wyatt and COOL

We have discussed the recent passage of the so-called Omnibus bill and a portion of the bill involved the COOL issue. Congress Passed the Omnibus, keeping the federal government funded through September 2016.  There were many riders tucked inside the spending bill, and here's one of the riders that the Idaho Cattle Association has been been watching closely is:

COOL: The labeling requirements have been suspended effective immediately.  USDA is not enforcing previous COOL requirements for beef. I talked with Executive Dir. of the Idaho Cattle Association, Wyatt Prescott. "It is a full repeal of COOL and that was a huge component for our industry. Idaho Cattle Association had a long-standing policy supporting voluntary COOL but to mandate it put severe restrictions on the beef cattle industry markets in our country. The very direct and immediate consequences were looming in that Canada and Mexico were authorized to retaliate with over $1 billion in tariffs and those tariffs could be applied to the products we sell. With Canada and Mexico as top five customers of our beef we felt taking those folks out of our equation in being able to market our product would have hurt the industry severely. So we are very happy to see that dialed back.