Canada’s pork producers are expressing disappointment with a U.S. decision to appeal a November 2011 World Trade Organization ruling that found Mandatory U.S. Country of Origin Labelling violates the United States’ international trade obligations.
Mandatory U.S. Country of Origin Labelling, implemented in 2008, requires a range of food products including fresh pork and beef to be identified at retail according to their country of origin.
In November a World Trade Organization panel investigating complaints from Canada and Mexico ruled the law affords imported livestock treatment less favorable than that accorded to like domestic livestock and is inconsistent with U.S. trade obligations.
On Friday the U.S. notified the WTO Dispute Settlement Body of its decision to appeal the panel’s findings.
Manitoba Pork Council Chair Karl Kynoch says the decision is disappointing.
Now that the U.S. has appealed the ruling that is basically going to add a lot longer time period to get the resolve to it.
It’s going to add another three months right now just to go through the appeal process and then we’ll have to wait to see what the U.S. does after that.
What we’d like to see is just a resolve come to this really soon but now that it’s been appealed we’re going to be in this for another three months and after that then it might have to go back through the farm bill or be attached to another bill so it’s going to take a long time to get a resolve out of this.
We’re going to see another one to two years before we get a final and complete resolve out of this.
The Canadian producers are very disappointed to see that it was appealed because they were looking forward to getting it resolved and being able to re-develop some of the relationships that they have with the U.S. producers in trading the baby pigs back and forth.
Kynoch observes mandatory COOL has really hurt the Canadian weanling industry and there are still barns sitting empty because the U.S. market for Canadian weanlings has dried up.
He notes the U.S. and Canadian and pork industries have enjoyed good relations in the past and U.S. pork producers have never supported COOL.
