Today, for instance, everything I’ve been reading about the U.S. government’s latest rules on food product labelling — the so-called v-COOL, or voluntary country-of-origin labelling law — raises more questions than answers.

We can’t talk about v-COOL from a Canadian perspective without first talking about its late, unlamented predecessor m-COOL (“m” for “mandatory”), so let’s set up that background. First developed in Bill Clinton’s administration, the m-COOL law meandered rather half-heartedly through the George W. Bush administration toward passage in 2008, and was put into effect during the Obama administration in 2009. That law imposed mandatory and very specific origin labels on beef, pork, lamb, chicken and goat meat and certain other perishables where sold at retail in the U.S.

We spent a lot of time writing about m-COOL online during those years and would receive the occasional comment from readers south of the border, asking if Canadian ranchers were “afraid of competition.” I so wanted to ask those commenters whether they somehow really believed that was ever Canada’s problem with m-COOL, or were just trolling us — but I had better things to do.

So we’re clear, Canada’s very real problem with Washington’s m-COOL law was that the law, as enforced by the Obama administration, was anti-competitive — forcing U.S. packers to provide a level of detail on meat labels which compelled them, at significant added cost, to segregate incoming animals at slaughter to meet the law’s requirements, essentially building a non-tariff trade barrier against Canadian livestock. Canada and Mexico, quite rightly, launched the long, tedious process of challenging m-COOL at the World Trade Organization — and, also quite rightly, won, in 2015.

With that trainwreck in the rear-view mirror, no one can fault Canada’s government, Canada’s livestock groups or the U.S. meatpacking sector for being suspicious of the Biden administration’s motives for the new v-COOL rule, published a year ago last month and finalized a few weeks ago to come into force starting in 2026.

The difference is that v-COOL will impose requirements on U.S. packers and processors who choose to use the terms “Product of USA” or “Made in the USA,” rather than on all U.S. packers and processors. As the U.S. Department of Agriculture puts it, the v-COOL rule allows those exact claims on meat, poultry and egg products “only when they are derived from animals born, raised, slaughtered and processed in the United States. The rule will prohibit misleading U.S. origin labeling in the market, and help ensure that the information that consumers receive about where their food comes from is truthful.”

Past that, any packer or processor whose labels make other voluntary U.S. origin claims besides those would need to include a description on the package of “all preparation and processing steps that occurred in the United States upon which the claim is made.”

So, U.S. packers and processors have almost two years to decide what’s more important to them: being able to make those very specific label claims of U.S. provenance on their packaging, or being able to import meat or livestock as needed, when needed.

From the Canadian government’s perspective, though, the Canadian and U.S. meat and livestock sectors are “highly integrated,” and — as the federal ag and trade ministers said jointly a few weeks ago, they’re “disappointed that the final (v-COOL) rule does not appear to take into account the concerns we have continually brought forward related to our unique and important trading relationship.” They also say they’ll “closely monitor its impacts and implementation, including in light of the U.S.’ international trade obligations.”

Or what? Well, the North American Meat Institute last year went so far as to point out that Canada, after winning its m-COOL case, still has WTO authorization to set up retaliatory tariffs against any U.S. label law that uses the same standard as mandatory COOL “with no further action by the WTO.” NAMI, a U.S. lobby group for beef, pork, lamb, veal and turkey packers and processors, argues that the v-COOL law comes with “no evidence this rule will increase already high consumer demand for meat and poultry products.”

Was that the point, though? Or is the U.S. label law this time actually about truth in packaging, as USDA claims?

We can talk about an integrated North American livestock market until the cows come home, so to speak, but here’s the question for you, the Prairie farmer and/or rancher: would you, as a consumer, expect a label that says “Product of Canada” or “Made in Canada” to contain product shipped in from across the NAFTA region — or strictly from animals born, raised, slaughtered and processed in Canada?

Come to think of it, that’s not even a hypothetical question up here.

Yes, Canada already has its own guidelines about packers’ and processors’ voluntary use of the terms “Product of Canada,” “Made in Canada,” and “100% Canadian” on their labels — that is, if they want to adhere to sections of the federal Food and Drugs Act and Safe Food for Canadians Act that ban “false and misleading claims.”

For meat, specifically, a “Product of Canada” label can be applied to “meat from Canadian animals that are slaughtered in Canada.” Under that guidance, “animals are considered Canadian if they are born or hatched, raised and slaughtered in Canada or, in the case of feeder cattle, if they have spent a period of at least 60 days in Canada prior to slaughter in Canada.”

With that in mind: should Canada still be prepared to fire its WTO-approved tariff arrow over U.S. v-COOL, if NAMI or any other lobby group asks us to do so?

Enough questions for today — other than to ask that you drop me a line with your thoughts on the matter.

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“One of the great strengths of the U.S.-Canada bilateral relationship is the successful integration of our meat and livestock sectors,” the submission said.

The Canadian government made its submission June 9 as part of U.S. consultations on voluntary country of origin labeling (vCOOL) for U.S. meat, poultry and eggs.

The Biden administration proposed the rule in March in response to lobbying from U.S. ranchers, Reuters reported at the time. The rule would limit “Product of USA” and similar labels to products derived from animals that were born, raised and slaughtered in the U.S. However, it would not require products to carry an origin label.

Under current rules, animal products can be labelled as “Product of USA” if animals were processed in the U.S., even if they were born and raised elsewhere.

In 2022, total U.S.-Canada trade in live cattle, hogs, poults and chicks, hatching eggs, beef and pork was worth more than US$8 billion, according to the recent Canadian submission.

Canada has argued that supply chains operating under the proposed rules will have to segregate Canadian and U.S. animals and products. This would be costly and inefficient and discourage companies from using Canadian inputs.

A similar rationale led to the downfall of vCOOL’s mandatory predecessor, struck down in 2015 following a World Trade Organization challenge that ruled in favour of the complainants, Canada and Mexico.

The new proposed rule could also harm U.S. producers, the Canadian government said.

“For example, in recent years, there has been an increase in live cattle exports from the United States to Canada due to feedlot capacity expansion in Canada, higher processing volumes, and strong demand for beef,” the submission read.

“Under the new proposed rule, if an American rancher sends an animal to a Canadian feedlot, by virtue of availability, proximity, or economics, that is then sent back to the U.S. for slaughter and processing, that product would no longer be allowed to bear a ‘Product of USA’ claim.”

The rule also fails to account for supply-chain integration in border states and provinces, the submission claims. It would put undue pressure on processing facilities, especially small or medium-sized plants, to source American inputs when Canadian inputs are closer at hand.

The Canadian government requested that the U.S. “pauses and reconsiders the proposed rule in order to allow for consultations between Canadian and U.S. officials.” –– Manitoba Co-operator staff

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture and its Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) on Monday announced they plan to publish a new proposed rule on U.S. meat origin labels for a 60-day public comment period.

USDA said in a release the new rule will offer “new regulatory requirements to better align the voluntary ‘Product of USA’ label claim with consumer understanding of what the claim means.”

USDA said Monday it undertook a review starting in July 2021 “to understand what the ‘Product of USA’ claim means to consumers and inform planned rulemaking.”

The department said it found in a related survey of U.S. consumers that “a significant portion believ(es) the claim means that the product was made from animals born, raised, slaughtered and processed in the United States.”

A “Product of USA” label claim would continue to be voluntary under the new rule, and would also still be eligible for “generic label approval” — meaning it would not need FSIS pre-approval before it could be used on regulated product.

However, the new rule would require that supporting documentation for so-labelled products be kept on file for FSIS personnel to verify.

Apart from the “authorized” label claims for ‘Product of USA’ or ‘Made in the USA,’ the rule also proposes to allow other voluntary U.S. origin claims seen on meat, poultry and egg products sold in the marketplace.

However, those other claims would need to include a description on the package of “all preparation and processing steps that occurred in the United States upon which the claim is made.”

Those other label claims are described as “qualified” claims. “Sliced and packaged in the United States, using imported pork” was given as an example of a qualified claim.

Currently, USDA said, FSIS-regulated products coming from animals that may have been born, raised and slaughtered in another country but are “minimally processed” in U.S. facilities may currently be labeled as ‘Product of USA.’

That policy, USDA said, “may be causing false impressions about the origin of FSIS-regulated products in the U.S. marketplace.”

“American consumers expect that when they buy a meat product at the grocery store, the claims they see on the label mean what they say,” U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Monday in the department’s release. “These proposed changes are intended to provide consumers with accurate information to make informed purchasing decisions.”

‘No evidence’

However, the North American Meat Institute, a U.S. lobby group representing beef, pork, lamb, veal and turkey packers and processors, said the proposed new rule “uses the same standard” as the mandatory COOL statute Washington repealed in 2015.

Mandatory COOL was first developed during the Clinton administration, passed near the end of the George W. Bush administration in 2008 and put in place during the Obama administration in 2009. It imposed mandatory origin labels for beef, pork, lamb, chicken and goat meat and certain other perishable commodities where sold at retail in the U.S.

Canada and Mexico responded by challenging COOL at the World Trade organization and in U.S. courts, because the COOL rules — as applied by Vilsack as the Obama administration’s ag secretary — called for U.S. processors of meat from imported animals to provide labels that detailed where the specific animals involved in a given package of meat were born, raised and slaughtered.

The costs involved in segregating animals and production lines to follow the COOL law prompted some U.S. packers and processors to restrict or halt their imports or cut the prices they paid for Canadian cattle and hogs. Some estimates at the time pegged Canadian cattle and hog producers’ losses to reduced prices and lost sales at over $8 billion.

Washington-based NAMI said the U.S. government “lost four times” against Canada and Mexico before the WTO in 2015 authorized those countries to levy over US$1 billion in retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods if the COOL rule wasn’t withdrawn.

By comparison, the new rule announced this week would limit the use of voluntary ‘Product of USA’ claims, so that only products made from livestock born, raised, harvested and processed in the U.S. could be so labelled, NAMI said.

But such a rule, NAMI said, “will have a discriminatory effect, causing meat packers and processors who wish to make the claim to segregate cattle, hogs, and meat from other nations.”

That segregation “was the basis for the WTO finding and is what allows Canada and Mexico to levy tariffs on American goods,” NAMI said.

Canada and Mexico “still retain that (WTO) authorization” for retaliatory tariffs, NAMI said, and any new label law that uses the same standard as mandatory COOL would allow those countries to “initiate retaliation with no further action by the WTO.”

NAMI also claims the proposed new label rule would actually be “broader than mandatory COOL” because it would also cover processed products, and products intended for foodservice, none of which were subject to the COOL rule.

The lobby group emphasized consumer opinion and transparency are “important to the meat and poultry industry” but said “there is no evidence this rule will increase already high consumer demand for meat and poultry products.”

Also, while supporters of the former COOL and the proposed new rule “like to claim” mandatory COOL increased the prices U.S. beef producers received in the years before that rule’s repeal, “this assertion ignores basic supply and demand fundamentals,” NAMI said.

“In 2015, cattle prices saw record highs because there was a limited supply of cattle to harvest increasing demand. And today, without COOL, cattle prices are again approaching record highs, also due to supply and demand.”

The proposed new rule also “does not consider the integrated nature of the North American meat and poultry industry,” NAMI said. “Livestock and meat products from Canada and Mexico are shipped, tariff-free, across the border for slaughter and processing in the United States. Likewise, meat products are shipped from the United States to Canada and Mexico.”

That “integrated competitive market” allows for more affordable beef and pork for U.S. consumers, NAMI said.

“Unfortunately, this proposed rule is problematic for many reasons. USDA should have considered more than public sentiment on an issue that impacts international trade,” NAMI CEO Julie Anna Potts said in a release.

Will review

In a separate statement Tuesday, Canada’s Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau and Trade Minister Mary Ng concurred that the Canadian and U.S. meat and livestock sectors are “highly integrated” and that collaboration “contributes to the growth and resilience of farmers and processors on both sides of the border.”

Canada “remains concerned about any measures that may cause disruptions to the integrated North American livestock supply chains,” they said, and will “closely review” the proposed new rules.

The ministers said the federal government will also “participate in the U.S. rule-making process” to make sure the new rules adhere to Washington’s international trade obligations and won’t disrupt supply chains.

Bibeau and Ng also emphasized the Canadian government remains “firmly opposed” to any U.S. proposition that would attempt to revive a mandatory COOL system.

According to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, language has also been included in the 2020 Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) requiring that each party to the trade pact ensures any regulations on labeling “accord treatment no less favourable than that accorded to like goods of national origin.”

Any rules on labeling that any of the CUSMA free trade bloc members impose in the future also must “not create unnecessary obstacles to trade between the parties.”

All that said, separate legislation, which if passed would compel the U.S. Trade Representative’s office and USDA to come up with a new and WTO-compliant mandatory COOL system just for beef, has already been before Congress for months or more.

A bill introduced in the U.S. Senate in September 2021 by Senator John Thune of South Dakota was read twice in that chamber and referred to its agriculture, nutrition and forestry committee.

An identical bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in late March last year by Texas Rep. Lance Gooden was referred at that time to the House ag committee, and to the House committee on ways and means. The ag committee last April 18 referred the bill to a House subcommittee on livestock and foreign agriculture. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Rep. Lance Gooden, a Republican from Texas, and Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, on Wednesday introduced H.R. 7291, proposing to restore the word “beef” into existing labeling law under the U.S. Agricultural Marketing Act.

The bill, if passed and enacted, would give U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack up to 180 days to “determine a means of reinstating” mandatory COOL for beef in a way that’s “in compliance with all applicable rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO).”

Tai and Vilsack would have up to a year from the date when the bill is enacted to “implement the means” to do so.

“American cattle ranchers are being undercut by foreign competition because current labeling standards allow imported beef to be marked as made in the United States if it is only packaged here,” Gooden said in a release Wednesday. “Our trade policies should promote American-made beef and put the hard-working cattle ranchers in the United States first.”

“It is critical that American consumers are able to make informed decisions about the meat they buy,” Khanna said in the same release. “Consumers should be able to know that they are truly supporting American farmers and ranchers from labels at the store.”

Groups including the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association and R-CALF USA also stated their support for the bill in Gooden’s release on Wednesday.

After its introduction Wednesday in the House of Representatives, the bill was referred to both the House agriculture committee and the House Ways and Means committee.

A nearly identical bipartisan bill, S. 2716, was introduced last fall in the U.S. Senate by Sen. John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, and Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, among others.

That bill was introduced Sept. 13, read twice and referred that day to the Senate committee on agriculture, nutrition, and forestry and has yet to return.

Both of the bills specify restoring COOL for beef must be WTO-compliant, because beef was pulled from the relevant labeling legislation in 2015 after the WTO ruled that COOL violated the United States’ international trade obligations.

COOL was first developed during the Clinton administration, passed near the end of the George W. Bush administration in 2008 and implemented during the Obama administration in 2009. It imposed mandatory origin labels for beef, pork, lamb, chicken and goat meat and certain other perishable commodities where sold at retail in the U.S.

Canada and Mexico responded by challenging COOL at the WTO and in U.S. courts, because the COOL rules — as applied by Vilsack as the Obama administration’s ag secretary — called for U.S. processors of meat from imported animals to provide labels that detailed where the specific animals involved in a given package of meat were born, raised and slaughtered.

The costs involved in segregating animals and production lines to follow that label law prompted some U.S. packers and processors to restrict or halt their imports or cut the prices they paid for Canadian cattle and hogs. Some estimates pegged Canadian cattle and hog producers’ losses to reduced prices and lost sales at over $8 billion.

After the WTO’s 2015 ruling against COOL, the Obama administration repealed the label rules on beef and pork rather than face retaliatory tariffs from Canada and Mexico on U.S. goods.

Since then, according to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, language has also been included in the 2020 Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) to require that each party ensures any regulations on labeling “accord treatment no less favourable than that accorded to like goods of national origin.”

Any rules on labeling that any of the CUSMA free trade bloc members impose in the future also must “not create unnecessary obstacles to trade between the parties.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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They’re not ignoring the possibility of trade disruptions in the U.S., said Ryder Lee, CEO of the Saskatchewan Cattlemen’s Association — “but neither are we lighting our hair on fire yet at each proposal you catch wind of.”

Lee expects to hear plenty of proposals between now and the Jan. 20 inauguration, and even through the next year. “And a lot of the things we’ll hear now are kind of spitballs. They’re waiting to see what sticks and what doesn’t.”

It’s certainly not the beef industry’s first rodeo. The sector has worked for years to reopen borders shut since the first case of BSE was found in an Alberta cow in 2003. And Canada only recently had mandatory country-of-origin labelling (COOL) struck down by the World Trade Organization.

“It’s a garden that needs tending all the time,” Lee said of trade issues such as COOL. But Canada has many staffers in Ottawa and D.C. who learned the ropes during BSE, he said.

Some newly elected officials and their staff also likely have some catching up to do, he acknowledged.

The SCA, however, sends money to the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association “to have those people on the ground, to have those relationships so that they’re not making it up as they go. They don’t have to. Cattle producers’ voices are heard there and understood.”

Those staffers are already talking to members of Congress and administration officials in D.C., Lee said, as well as people connected to Trump’s transition team.  In fact, firing up COOL again might already have proved to be “a bit of a lead balloon,” he said.

Lee’s basing that hope on a recent article from MeatingPlace.com, which reported Trump’s agricultural advisory committee has already talked the transition team out of reinstating COOL.

The push for COOL was coming from beef producers at a recent meeting organized by R-CALF, the South Dakota Stockgrowers’ Association and the Independent Beef Association of North Dakota, MeatingPlace reported.

Trade actions such as COOL are always a risk, Lee said. “But the nice thing about that one is it’s fresh enough everybody knows what happened at the WTO, what our retaliation list is.”

Bilateral deals

It looks like “the sun is setting” on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), said Lee. A Canadian government official has said Canada has until February 2018 to make a final decision on walking away from the deal, the Toronto Star reports.

Trump, however, has promised to drop the multilateral deal between 12 Pacific Rim nations, effectively killing it.

Canada could follow New Zealand’s lead, passing TPP at home to send a signal that we’re not talking protectionism, Lee said.

“The jewel of TPP for us was catching up on access to Japan,” said Lee. Canada had started negotiating a bilateral agreement with Japan, and TPP’s demise could add “a little more fuel to it,” he added.

Ultimately, Lee would like to see better access to Japan’s high-value market for Canadian beef. “Australia has about an 11 per cent advantage into Japan for beef exports. That’s more than your profit a lot of the time.”

Mexico is also an important market for Canadian beef, and China has “exploded” for the industry as Canada has gotten better access, Lee said.

Beyond that, markets depend on cuts, what kind of value chains are set up, which processor is involved, and how they’ll be supplying that business throughout the year.

But while Canada’s beef industry supplies other markets, the U.S. remains an important trading partner.

“A lot of the time it’s our home market that’s most important,” Lee said. “And the U.S., we can service it fresh and on a truck. So those two are always the biggest ones.”

— Lisa Guenther is a field editor for Grainews and Country Guide based at Livelong, Sask. Follow her at @LtoG on Twitter.

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U.S. news network CNN reported on Tuesday that a memo drafted by President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team, which it obtained, said the new administration would immediately initiate changes to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico. Those changes could include measures on country-of-origin labelling (COOL), CNN reported.

The U.S. COOL program required as of 2009 that retail outlets label food according to its origin. Canada and Mexico argued that COOL, repealed in December, led to fewer of their cattle and pigs being slaughtered in the U.S.

“We’re watching… and if we think it discriminates against our cattle, our recommendation is going to be that tariffs go into place immediately” on U.S. products, said John Masswohl, director of government and international relations for the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, which represents Canada’s 68,500 beef farms and feedlots.

The World Trade Organization last year authorized Canada to retaliate against the U.S. over COOL, setting the annual level at $1.055 billion.

Canada’s previous Conservative government listed in 2013 three dozen U.S. product categories that could be subject to a 100 per cent surtax, including pork, beef, cherries, appliance parts, chocolate, wine and office furniture, but none were imposed.

Alex Lawrence, spokesman for Canada’s Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland, would not say if Canada is inclined to retaliate, adding Ottawa looks forward “to working very closely with the new administration and with the United States Congress, including on trade and investment.”

Until it’s clear how Trump might approach COOL, no action is necessary, Masswohl said.

“I don’t go around chasing ghosts,” Masswohl said. “If anything starts to become real, we’ll know well in advance.”

The Canadian Pork Council, which represents the country’s hog farmers, is taking a wait-and-see approach until it knows what changes, if any, the next U.S. government will make, said executive director John Ross.

— Rod Nickel is a Reuters correspondent covering the agriculture and mining sectors from Winnipeg.

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COOL was done away with in late December 2015 after the U.S. Congress attached a COOL repeal of order to a massive spending bill later signed by President Barack Obama.

While I haven’t notice any drastic changes in market behaviour, some points should be reviewed.

For feeder cattle, the effects of COOL so far have been hard to measure. In 2014 when cattle prices rallied sharply, feeder cattle exports to the U.S. were 441,695 head, up 40 per cent from 2013. During 2015, feeder cattle exports to the U.S. were 287,803 head, a year-over-year decrease of 35 per cent. It appears enough U.S. feedlots had adapted to segregating Canadian feeder cattle when prices were at historical highs to limit the effect on the market for Canadian cow-calf producers. The feeder cattle market is a pure competitive market and there are many factors influencing the price.

For slaughter cattle, it was also difficult to measure the effects of COOL if you only look at export volumes to the U.S. We’ve seen packing plant closures in the U.S., which was partially attributed to COOL. These closures have bearing on live cattle prices in different regions of Canada and the U.S.

Secondly, the closures also influenced overall trade flows of frozen fresh and chilled cuts. Keep in mind U.S. beef production was at a historical low in 2014 and first half of 2015. COOL may have caused average basis levels to deteriorate by $2 to $4; however, we’ve seen the fed cattle market swing by $20 to $50 over the past two years.

I always tell producers not to worry about pennies when there are $100 bills flying over your head. There are larger fundamental issues influencing the market and if managed correctly, can make you more profitable.

Who benefits from COOL

The main question is who benefits from labelling? Is it the consumer, or is it individual producers or some main producer or lobby group on either side of the border?

Take for example A&W’s commitment to use beef raised without added steroids or hormones. Certain feedlots in Canada are satisfying this demand and if the overall goal is to increase beef consumption, then this may exclude some producers from this market share but may benefit others. A&W is clearly trying to differentiate itself from other fast food chains but the marketing perception in regards to all other beef may be somewhat misleading.

In my own view, COOL may have been a bit ahead of its time. The industry does not like to be legislated into production or labelling practices. The preference is that consumers chose and the production will react and change accordingly. The trend in food labelling is more labelling, not less. Although COOL may have caused an economic disadvantage for Canadian producers, I believe longer term, consumer groups will have more power than the industry lobby.

Recently, the “right to know movement” has consumer groups proposing labeling to identify products made from GMO crops. I wouldn’t be surprised if this eventually extends into beef or other meat products. We all know about “organic beef” which is in a world of its own but another way producers are looking for an added benefit through various labelling and production methods.

COOL can also be part of the overall food safety dialogue. Food safety is a main factor driving traceability policy, which includes age verification, premise ID and movement. These are the three pillars of the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency in which Canada is far ahead of the U.S. This progress was key to resuming exports to certain destinations after the previous BSE case.

Our beef industry is always one bacterium away from shutting foreign borders as new strains are a constant risk. In previous issues, I’ve also discussed beef as a functional food or food-ceuticals; beef working together with the medical community for a specific health benefit. This will also require in depth labelling and promotional advertising. I strongly believe this is the part of the future of beef production.

Under COOL, Canadian exports of feeder cattle and slaughter cattle varied quite significantly given the overall market conditions over the past few years. In theory, there was a disadvantage for Canadian producers, but it was very difficult to measure when cattle and beef prices are at historical highs. The trend in food labelling is more labelling, not less.

Food safety is a main factor driving traceability policy; consumer groups are becoming more powerful proposing more labeling on food products. Beef producers will respond accordingly to satisfy consumer demands and this can sometimes benefit individuals or the corporate group of producers.

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And after all the trips and lobbying to the U.S. capital over the past eight years, I figured “You guys are wasting your time.” But lo, there at the end of 2015, President Barack Obama signed the order to do away with COOL.

The World Trade Organization kept holding the U.S. feet to the fire in its rulings that said COOL was unfair. Canada and Mexico (because it affected them too) joined with their threats and plans to impose about $4 billion in levies and surcharges on U.S. imports. The WTO ruled that $1 billion was fair.

And it wasn’t even that the U.S. government administration that supported COOL. The U.S. agriculture secretary, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the U.S. meat industry all were in agreement with WTO rulings. It was just relatively strong and somewhat radical Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund (R-Calf) that lobbied long and hard to have COOL created.

Writer Jeff Gaye in the January issue of Beef Business, the Saskatchewan Stock Growers magazine, had a good article on the rise and fall of COOL (available at skstockgrowers.com). In the article SSGA past-president Harold Martens said at one point COOL was costing the Canadian meat industry about $640 million per year in lost business and it also cost Canadian producers about $2 million to fight COOL. I’m not sure what the final figures are, obviously the fight was a worthwhile investment.

But I decided over the years that these trade matters are fickle and irrational. I remember sitting in the office of Nithi Govindasamy years ago and marvelled as he talked about the slow pace of trade negotiations. Govindasamy is now deputy minister of Saskatchewan Ministry of Highways and Infrastructure, but back in the day he was a young international trade specialist with Alberta Agriculture.

But I guess the grain guys also know a bit about patience and persistence. How many decades of lobbying and protesting did it take to end the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly? I was probably the last to discover this information, but recently during some reading I learned that when the wheat pools were created back in early 1920s they themselves created a Central Selling Agency to pool the price and market grain. That system was successful for several years, but then the Agency ran into financial difficulties after a crop failure in 1928-29, so the federal government stepped in to bail it out, and then created the CWB in 1935.

Maybe now that the CCA guys have a lot of spare time after slaying the COOL dragon, they can work on dismantling or fixing the Middle East oil cartel to get the world economy going again.

Coming Events

• Alberta Beef Industry Conference — Beef producers from across Western Canada are invited to the annual Alberta Beef Industry Conference, Feb. 17 to 19 at the Sheraton Hotel in Red Deer, Alta. The conference will feature more than a dozen speakers on a wide range of topics including marketing, business management, nutritional advice, animal health, and North American and global economics and markets. One session bound to have an interesting message will feature former Alberta Conservative cabinet minister Doug Griffiths with a talk on 13 ways to kill your beef industry. For more details visit the conference website at: www.abiconference.ca
• SSGA Spring Break — If you’re looking to get away to someplace warm, the Saskatchewan Stock Growers Association may still have room on its seven-day spring break trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico March 4 to 11. Along with being able to attend the Campeonato Nacional Charro Rodeo, it sounds like there will be plenty of time to relax at the Sheraton Buganvillias. Cost of the trip is CDN$1,610 (based on double occupancy). Call Katherin at 1-306-690-5309 for details.
• Livestock care in Alberta — Fresh opportunities, global perspectives and lively discussion are set to capture the spotlight at the 2016 Livestock Care Conference, March 22-23 in Olds, Alta., hosted by Alberta Farm Animal Care (AFAC). The Livestock Care Conference begins Tuesday, March 22, with special sessions including a sheep-handling workshop,and the AFAC Annual General Meeting. The main speaker agenda is Wednesday, March 23, kicking-off with a message from the provincial Minister of Agriculture and Forestry and a welcome and update from the AFAC Executive Director. Brenda Schoepp discusses The Interconnetion Between Human and Animal Welfare; Dr. Jennifer Walker talks Animal Welfare at the Intersection Between Politics, Policy, Profit & People; Leona Dargis presents on Animal Welfare Around the World; Dr. Alexandra Harlander discusses Hot Topics in Poultry Welfare; and Marion Popkin presents on All About Rabbits. In addition, the conference features a ‘Bear Pit’ Panel Session on “When Manure Hits the Fan.” Bear Pit panelists include Darren Vanstone of World Animal Protection, Jackie Wepruk of National Farm Animal Care Council (NFACC), Brandy Street of the BC.SPCA and Michelle Follensbee of the Animal Welfare Branch of Alberta Agriculture and Forestry. Complete agenda details and registration information is available at www.afac.ab.ca. Follow at hashtag #LCC2016.

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Mexico had announced earlier this month it would start internal procedures to strip benefits from some U.S. agricultural and industrial imports, including apples, dairy items, alcoholic drinks and personal hygiene products.

The measures would have gone into effect on Dec. 22, the government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The proposed move came after the World Trade Organization (WTO) authorized the retaliation against the United States’ country-of-origin labeling (COOL) rules on meat and certain other foods.

The U.S. Congress on Friday passed a broad 2016 spending package that includes the repeal of the rules in question, in order to avoid more than US$1 billion in trade retaliation by Mexico and Canada.

In a statement Saturday, Mexico’s economy ministry said both the Canadian and Mexican governments welcomed the repeal, but did not specifically comment on the proposed retaliatory measures.

— Reporting for Reuters by Ana Isabel Martinez; writing by Alexandra Alper.

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Tucked into an omnibus appropriations bill put before Congress Friday, the repeal shuts the door on a major irritant in North American trade relations and is expected to curb U.S. processors’ COOL-related discounts on imported Canadian cattle, hogs, beef and pork.

The bill now goes to President Barack Obama for his signature, and Canadian officials said Friday he plans to sign it.

Canada’s Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland, on a conference call Friday from unrelated World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meetings in Nairobi, described the repeal as “a great day for the Canada/U.S. relationship, and a great day for the Three Amigos of NAFTA.”

The repeal follows six years of COOL challenges and U.S. appeals at the WTO, which pitted the U.S. against the other Two Amigos of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Canada and Mexico, and ended earlier this month with a WTO panel approving set levels of retaliatory tariffs that Canada and Mexico could impose on U.S. goods.

Canada will still go to the WTO Monday to seek approval to levy retaliatory tariffs, Freeland said, describing the move as “an important procedural step in the WTO process.”

Retaliation approval from the WTO had been expected earlier but was delayed, due mainly to the Nairobi ministerial meetings, she said.

While Canada is glad for the repeal, the “actual (trade) obstacles, as of the moment we are speaking, haven’t been removed… we think it is prudent of us to take the process to its final, technical conclusion, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Canada’s Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay said Friday the government will still “actively monitor to ensure that the incentives to discriminate against Canadian cattle and hogs are quickly removed from the marketplace.”

However, he added, he expects the repeal to restore normal cross-border beef, pork and livestock trade “quite shortly.”

Asked on the call whether the repeal would also remove COOL on Canadian sheep and lamb, Freeland said the WTO complaint specifically applied to the beef and pork sectors, where Canada “had a very significant trading case to make.”

MacAulay said his understanding was that the repeal applies to beef and pork, and any remaining COOL issues on Canadian product would be dealt with later. COOL since 2009 has also applied to imports of fish, shellfish, fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables and certain nuts.

Challenging COOL “has been a long and expensive fight for Canadian producers,” Canadian Pork Council chair Rick Bergmann said in a separate release Friday. “We look forward to (Obama) signing the bill to avoid retaliatory action and closing the book on this dispute.”

U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden on Friday hailed the overall bill, saying it “averts another unnecessary government shutdown, and lays a path forward to the type of governing by consensus that the American people deserve and expect.”

Philip Ellis, president of the U.S. National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, said Friday that COOL has “plagued our industry for many years now, costing us millions and driving us to the brink of retaliation from two of our largest trading partners. Cattle producers have had to bear the cost of this failed program for far too long.”

The NCBA and National Pork Producers Council noted the Republican chairs of the U.S. Senate and House agriculture committees, Sen. Pat Roberts and Rep. Michael Conaway, and California Democrat Rep. Jim Costa were key in getting COOL repeal language added to the omnibus spending bill.

“America’s pork producers are grateful that lawmakers, particularly Chairman Roberts and Chairman Conaway, recognized the economic harm we faced from retaliation because of the WTO-illegal COOL law,” NPPC president Ron Prestage said in a separate release.

“I know tariffs on U.S. pork would have been devastating to me and other pork producers.”

Before the bill’s passage, Bill Bullard, CEO of U.S. ranchers’ group R-CALF USA, a long-time proponent of COOL, urged Congress to pull the COOL language or, failing that, for Obama to veto the bill.

U.S. cattle producers, he said, “cannot compete in the global marketplace if consumers cannot distinguish their beef from the beef imported by multinational meatpackers from the 14 countries that currently ship beef into the United States.”

COOL, in place in the U.S. since 2009, was ruled out of order by the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) in 2011 and WTO Appellate Body in 2012 for discriminating against Canadian and Mexican livestock and meat.

The U.S. in 2013 revised the COOL law, tightening its requirements for information on where animals were born, raised and slaughtered, in response to the WTO’s criticism that the law “does not fulfil its legitimate objective” of consumer education.

A WTO compliance panel last year ruled the U.S. changes didn’t make COOL WTO-compliant, leading to hearings over the allowable level of retaliatory tariffs Canada and Mexico could impose without a repeal. — AGCanada.com Network

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