Dispute Over COOL Expected to Come to a Head in December

By Bruce Cochrane

The chair of the Canadian Pork Council expects the dispute over the issue of U.S. Mandatory Country of Origin Labelling to come to a head over the next month.

Mandatory U.S. Country of Origin Labelling was discussed this week as members of the Canadian Pork Council gathered in Ottawa for the organization's fall meeting.

In September Canada and Mexico made their case for authorization to impose retaliatory tariffs of over $3,000,000,000 annually on imported U.S, products if the United States fails to bring COOL into compliance with its international trade obligations and the World Trade Organization is expected to release its decision shortly.
Canadian Pork Council chair Rick Bergmann expects December to be a very significant month.

Rick Bergmann-Canadian Pork Council:
Both Mexico and Canada have applied to the WTO for the ability to retaliate and we understand that the U.S. is very aware of that looming threat.

That said, last week we spent time with the National Pork Producers Council at one of our trilateral meetings and had a lot of discussion about Country of Origin Labelling with them.

The National Pork Producers Council, they understand the importance of open trade and so on.

They're big allies and supporters of the Canadian industry on this in regards to the importance of having COOL being repealed.
Again December is very significant month for information like this coming our way and then also the ability for Canada to impose retaliatory measures if the U.S. does not come into compliance.

Bergmann notes he discussed the matter this week with federal agriculture minister Laurence MacAulay.

He says the minister assured him the federal government expects its trade partners around the world to be compliant and he looks forward to Ottawa moving ahead with retaliation in the event efforts to convince the U.S. to repeal the legislation reach a dead end.

Source: Farmscape