A Labelling Consumers Don’t Want
The problem between Canada and United States has been occurred for a long time. Even
though they have a great relationship for their business world, the problem started at 2009
when Obama administration implemented the MANDATORY Country of Origin Labeling
(COOL) legislation, requiring US firms to track and notify customers of the country of
origin of meat and other agricultural products at each major state of production, including
at the retail level. However, once a seemingly innocent move in the name of protecting
consumer was made, it provoked fierce protests from Canada. According the article “A
Labelling Consumers Don’t Want”, U.S. cattlemen complain that under NAFTA they are
losing market share to Canadian and other foreign beef. If imported beef is further
processed in the U.S. or if live cattle are imported directly for processing, the meat is sold
as American. “Western Canada does ship 40% to 50% of its production to the U.S., but
that’s only 2% to 3% of the total American beef market”. The reasons, however, are that
many young Canadian pigs are exported to the United States, where they are mixed and
raised together with indigenous US pigs for fattening and slaughter. After several months,
separating the (immigrant) Canadian Pigs from the (native-born) Us pig is challenging and
costly. The US department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates that it will cost the food
industry $2.5 billion to comply with the new rules. Causing many damages since when