The American National Farmers Union has fired back at Gerry Ritz after the federal agriculture minister’s strongly worded remarks earlier this week about Canada’s battle against country of origin labelling.
“Recent threats by the Canadian agriculture minister are unjustified and out of line,” said NFU president Roger Johnson in a statement yesterday.
“As a sovereign nation, we should not take direction from Canada. They do not dictate what is compliant, it is the reason we have the WTO.”
Ritz said Monday that he was confident COOL would be repealed during U.S. farm bill deliberations that are now underway.
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He also said Canada would act on its list of retaliatory measures pending the outcome of World Trade Organization rulings on amended COOL legislation.
“Canada will do whatever it takes to help fix this bad law, including acting on our list of retaliatory measures,” Ritz said. Canada prepared a list earlier this year of U.S. products that would be subjected to retaliatory tariffs should COOL be fully implemented in its latest form.
He and the agriculture ministers from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba most recently made their case against COOL at the North American Meat Association conference in Chicago.
U.S. mandatory COOL has cost the Canadian livestock industry an estimated $1 billion annually. Canada and Mexico won a ruling at the WTO against COOL and the U.S. then prepared an amendment that the WTO has yet to rule upon.
Johnson said the NFU continues to support COOL, as does the U.S. government.
“The U.S. Department of Agriculture has confirmed its commitment and confidence in U.S. COOL laws on multiple occasions,” he said.
“The USTR (U.S. trade representative) has earlier said several times publicly that the changes contained in USDA’s final rule will bring the current COOL requirements into compliance with the World Trade Organization ruling. It is important to remember that the WTO found the COOL law to be compliant. Many other countries in the WTO have similar laws.”
