“Until we receive a result that works best for Canada we will continue to stand up for our producers against COOL,” pledged Gerry Ritz as he and Stockwell Day outlined Ottawa’s strategy for addressing mandatory U.S. Country of Origin Labeling.
On December 1, Canada’s minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food Gerry Ritz and minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Stockwell Day announced Ottawa has requested formal consultations with the United States, under the World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement process, on Country of Origin Labeling (COOL).
Under M-COOL, in effect in the U.S. since September 30, American retailers must identify a range of food products including fresh and frozen cuts of pork and beef, including ground pork and beef, according to its country of origin.
“These provisions are unfairly hurting our Canadian exports,” said Day. “It (COOL) imposes additional costly requirements for our producers and for U.S. producers.”
He believes Canada needs to make life easier for the exporters, not more difficult.
“We’ve explored all the options. We have no option now but to assert our WTO rights in defense of our exporters.”
The minister said Canadian cattle and hog producers began to report an immediate negative impact, as predicted, upon implementation of COOL.
Since October 1, the movement of Canadian live hogs into the U.S. has fallen dramatically according to Canadian Pork Council president Jurgen Preugschas.
He says the movement of slaughter hogs has slowed to a trickle with most of those hogs being killed here as plants in Canada have ramped up. As well the price is significantly lower for Canadian origin weanlings compared U.S. origin weanlings.
“It’s actually shut down a lot of the barns,” said Manitoba Pork Council chairman Karl Kynoch.
“Many producers here have lost the homes for their weanlings because the American producers can’t get contracts with their packers to ship them so they have had to stop buying them.”
Kynoch estimates the new rules have forced 25 to 30 percent of the weanling industry in Manitoba to shut down. At the same time he estimates the number of slaughter hogs moving from Manitoba has dropped from 1.5 million before M-COOL to an expected 150,000 over the next year.
