Canada’s meat producers cheer WTO ruling

Canada’s beef and pork sectors are cheering a decision made by the World Trade Organization allowing Canada and Mexico to impose up to $1.055 billion in retaliatory annual tariffs on U.S. products.

In the WTO’s ruling, issued Dec. 7, 2015, the organization concluded that the American “rules of origin” labelling provisions put Canadian and Mexican meat products at a disadvantage.

The U.S. mandatory Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) has been in effect since 2008, and in those seven years, the “cumulative losses for the Canadian beef and pork sectors have been staggering,” according to a joint a joint press release issued by the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, Canadian Pork Council, Canadian Meat Council and the National Cattle Feeders Association.

“Our patience is exhausted. There is no further negotiation to be done and no compromise is acceptable. Canadian livestock producers and meat processors expect the U.S. to do nothing less than repeal COOL or face the immediate imposition of retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods to the same extent as the damage we have endured,” stated the joint press release.

“We applaud the Governments of Canada and Mexico for their persistence in moving the lengthy WTO process to this final point. We will continue to support them as they move forward with the imposition of tariffs on a combined $1.01 billion USD of imports from the United States.”

According to a CBC news story, the Liberal government has said it will “quickly take steps to retaliate” against the U.S. if the labelling requirements aren’t promptly dropped.