The Canadian Cattlemen’s Association is calling on the federal government to re-open its challenge of U.S. Mandatory Country of Origin Labelling legislation following a call for additional voluntary labelling measures.
Last week U.S. agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack announced the final rule for Mandatory U.S. Country of Origin Labelling regulations will take effect, as scheduled, March 16th but he has called on U.S. processors and retailers to implement additional voluntary labelling measures.
Canadian Cattlemen’s Association foreign trade committee chair Travis Toews says the call for additional measures increases the level of uncertainty on both sides of the border.
We’re calling on the federal government to resume its WTO challenge based on these guidelines that have been subsequently submitted to U.S. processors.
With the guidelines basically being invoked with the threat of subsequent rule making, we think that we have a de facto rule in place and a rule that is much more onerous than actually the interim final rule was which was the rule on which the government of Canada took action.
We were willing to let the final rule be implemented as written and sit back and see what was going to happen to our trade but the secretary’s call for voluntary compliance on further guidelines is an issue for us so we’re calling on the federal government to resume its WTO trade challenge.
Toews says industry sectors in the U.S. are still assessing how they will comply with the requested voluntary labelling measures but these additional guidelines are expected to create significant disruption in live cattle trade and Canadian live cattle will be discriminated against as a result.
Source: Farmscape.Ca
