The General Manager of Manitoba Pork is expressing concern over US efforts to restore Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling.
A bill passed by the US Senate Agriculture Committee calls for the development of a World Trade Organization-compliant labeling system that will require retailers to identify where cattle were born, raised and slaughtered.
Manitoba Pork General Manager Cam Dahl says this is something we’ve seen in the past and that Canada and Mexico successfully challenged at the WTO.
What the requirement was is that all the packages, all the retail packages of meat in the U.S. needed to indicate where the animal was born, raised, processed and packaged and that all needed to be included on the label. What that did was significantly increase the cost of putting meat on the shelf in the United States because this required segregating pigs that might have been born in Canada but raised and processed in Iowa. Those would have to be segregated from other products. That significantly increased the cost of food and it also discriminated against Canadian and Mexican industries. It really curtailed, in Manitoba’s case, our ability to export live animals into the U.S. when Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling came into effect.
If you think of today, Manitoba exports three million live animals a year into the United States for finishing and processing. So, that was a significant hit to the industry and it was a significant cost to farmers in this province and a significant hit to the jobs that depend on their industry. So, it had a very significant negative impact.
~ Cam Dahl, Manitoba Pork
Dahl suggests if Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling is introduced for beef, pork will be close behind. He believes government and industry need to come up with creative solutions that satisfy the concerns of consumers while not interrupting our North American integrated market.
