On Monday, a group of trade associations representing the spectrum of America’s beef and pork production system issued an urgent plea to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Froman. The coalition wants USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) to hold off on enforcing new country of origin labeling requirements until the World Trade Organization (WTO) has an opportunity to hear Canada and Mexico’s challenge to the new regulations.
The groups requesting the delay represent the meat industry, grocers, and livestock producers. They assert that implementation of AMS’s new COOL labeling requirements, which will ban commingling of products with different countries of origin will be disruptive at many different levels of the meat production value chain. The groups indicate they are concerned that the new labeling scheme is vulnerable to a challenge before the WTO, which would require AMS to re-write the COOL Rule again.
Read the rest of this post on John Dillard’s AgWeb.com Blog – Ag in the Courtroom.
