COOL Again

The United States recently filed an appeal to the World Trade Organization's recent ruling against the nation's country-of-origin-labeling law. The WTO said in October that Washington failed to bring into compliance with international trade law a revised version of the meat labeling law. Canada, Mexico and other trading partners have fought the rules for years, contending that they discriminate against their livestock. I talked with Idaho Cattle Association's Wyatt Prescott: "U.S. appeals WTO ruling on COOL. Give me an idea of what that all means. It has been a long process with COOL but the WTO ruled that the United States country-of-origin-labeling violated trade agreements. The US is appealing that decision. We tend to agree that it does violate those agreements but one of our major concerns with that violation is that Canada and Mexico, our number one and two trading partner states that by the most beef from us, will start levying tariffs on our product in response to that. The WTO ruling says that they can legally do that in retaliation to country-of-origin-labeling. There are a lot of nuances and caveats. One is that we support voluntary country-of-origin-labeling and not mandatory, the reason being there are a couple of layers, first and foremost, this WTO ruling that basically states that in response to requiring mandatory, that means those other states can start tariffs against purchasing our products."