Trent Thomas has his work cut out for him this week as he goes about his Capitol Hill business as Washington co-ordinator for the R-CALF lobby group.
“I am meeting with elected officials and their staff on Capitol Hill next week, urging on them the importance of country-of-origin labelling,” he said May 23.
R-CALF and supporters of the American farm bill requirement that COOL become mandatory Oct. 1, 2004, found new ammunition last week with the discovery of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in an Alberta cow.
Opponents of the labelling legislation, including the Canadian government and Canadian agricultural exporters, have been claiming momentum is growing to kill the mandatory requirement because of the costs it would impose on the American food industry.
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Proponents of COOL say last week changed everything.
“It appears the BSE case in Alberta can do nothing but spur forward the implementation of COOL in the United States,” Thomas said from Washington. “Country-of-origin labelling could calm the worries of consumers …. The BSE case in Alberta is the main topic of conversation in agriculture circles.”
In Ottawa, a senior government trade official conceded that the BSE incident is a setback in the fight against U.S. country-of-origin labelling plans.
“I’m sure supporters of it will use this as a reason to label,” Agriculture Canada trade director general Rory McAlpine said. “But it will be such a cost in the U.S. and we have so many allies there who are opposing it for that reason that I don’t think this will have a permanent
effect.”
Canada insists the labelling is protectionism.
Still, he said it will be an issue this week when leaders from all links in the beef chain, from producers and packers to renderers, retailers and exporters, gather in Ottawa for one of the scheduled “value chain” meetings being organized under the agriculture policy framework.
The May 28-29 meeting had been planned earlier “but the timing is good and the agenda is changing,” said McAlpine. “We will be looking at all aspects of the recovery plan, from strategies and communications to regulations. It will be an important discussion and labelling will be part of that.”
For Thomas and R-CALF, there could be no better way to expose the necessity of giving consumers a choice about where their beef was produced.
“The worst case scenario in the discussion of the merits of COOL has come true,” said the Washington lobbyist. “What if a country importing beef to the U.S. has an outbreak of a food-borne disease?”
The chances of a human disease developing are remote, he said. “But consumers are still very concerned and the mainstream media blitz has heightened the disease awareness of consumers.”
