The general manager of Manitoba Pork says, if passed, an amendment included in a U.S. funding bill will resolve the dispute over U.S. Mandatory Country of Origin Labelling.
Yesterday the Chair the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, announced the inclusion of repeal of Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling for beef and pork in the year-end funding bill currently awaiting a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Manitoba Pork general manager Andrew Dickson says, this is a very important development.
Yesterday the Chair the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, announce the inclusion of mandatory Country of Origin Labeling repeal in the year-end funding bill, currently awaiting a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Manitoba Pork general manager Andrew Dickson says, this is a very important development.
The wording that we’ve seen would indicate that essentially the legislation would be gutted for this particular aspect of Country of Origin Labelling and it meets the request that we’ve been making for many many years now to try and get this legislation fixed.
Congress knows that this Friday Canada and Mexico will be completing the WTO process in Geneva and getting authority to impose substantial retaliatory measures against the United States. I think minds are focused in Congress on that. They realize that any retaliatory measures will be extremely disruptive to the American economy with its 2 major trading partners and they’re doing everything to try to avoid that scenario.
I should also point out that we’re also encouraging the government of Canada to continue with the WTO process, complete it so that it does have the authority to impose retaliatory measures and, if the COOL legislation passes and the regulation gets changed, then there’s no need to exercise that authority but it’s like holding an arrow in the quiver and we have encouraged them to retain that authority.
Dickson says the process is not completed so there is still some apprehension but, if things progress as we hope, by the end of next week we could see COOL removed from the law books.
