I happened to turn on my TV and catch an episode of Dr. ODD. His discussion was about hamburg and what part of the animal that it came from and of course there was a discussion about animal feed and care. All in all he treated beef farmers with the respect that they deserve and he did praise the beef industry for their animal care and food safety efforts.
One of the things that came up was COOL [country of origin labeling]. When it was started, in the nineties as I recall it ended quickly when Mexico and Canada sued in the WTO with claims that it would cause prejudice against their farm producers so the US government scuttled the idea. My memory of that is slightly different. I do remembering getting a notice from the department of agriculture that I needed to register my farm and get a unique id number. I, like most other US farms balked at that idea and refused to register our farms. If I remember correctly, less that 20% of Us farmers complied and threatened to hold their products from the market. Under that cloud of rebellion and the action of the WTO COOL was abandoned by the US.
Would the COOL thing have hurt Canadian or Mexican farmers I can not say for certain but I do believe in would not have had much effect on farm imports from Canada as most Americans perceives that country as just a smaller version of our US. There was the mad cow scare about then so some decrease in beef imports from that country did occur.
With Mexico it might have caused some decrease in us consumption of their beef but not enough to cause any serious loss to their farmers as that meat is usually
priced lower that US produced meat. The COOL rule covered more that meat but other produce as well but it was meat that caused the most controversy. During the winter we might not have many tomatoes or other summer produce if not for Mexico.
From my point of view COOL was a dumb idea from day one. When I am hungry I set down and say pass the roast, potatoes and gravy . I never have asked, what country did this food come from.
One of the things that came up was COOL [country of origin labeling]. When it was started, in the nineties as I recall it ended quickly when Mexico and Canada sued in the WTO with claims that it would cause prejudice against their farm producers so the US government scuttled the idea. My memory of that is slightly different. I do remembering getting a notice from the department of agriculture that I needed to register my farm and get a unique id number. I, like most other US farms balked at that idea and refused to register our farms. If I remember correctly, less that 20% of Us farmers complied and threatened to hold their products from the market. Under that cloud of rebellion and the action of the WTO COOL was abandoned by the US.
Would the COOL thing have hurt Canadian or Mexican farmers I can not say for certain but I do believe in would not have had much effect on farm imports from Canada as most Americans perceives that country as just a smaller version of our US. There was the mad cow scare about then so some decrease in beef imports from that country did occur.
With Mexico it might have caused some decrease in us consumption of their beef but not enough to cause any serious loss to their farmers as that meat is usually
priced lower that US produced meat. The COOL rule covered more that meat but other produce as well but it was meat that caused the most controversy. During the winter we might not have many tomatoes or other summer produce if not for Mexico.
From my point of view COOL was a dumb idea from day one. When I am hungry I set down and say pass the roast, potatoes and gravy . I never have asked, what country did this food come from.