By Bruce Cochrane
Canada's agriculture minister says U.S. lawmakers are well aware of the consequences of failure to approve legislation that will repeal provisions of Country of Origin Labelling for beef and pork.
On Wednesday, following word that repeal of provisions of U.S. Country of Origin Labelling pertaining to beef and pork has been included in the year-end funding bill currently awaiting a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives, Canada's ministers of International Trade and Agriculture and Agri-Food addressed reporters.
Lawrence MacAulay, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, says, once COOL is satisfactorily removed, Canada will be in a position to remove retaliation.
Lawrence MacAulay-Canada Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food:
Country of Origin Labelling harms Canadian and Mexican livestock producers as well U.S. processors and producers.
It also disrupts the highly integrated North American meat industry supply chain.
Congress now has the opportunity to fix COOL.
We are cautiously optimistic that this will lead to a resolution and trade on beef and pork will be restored.
The bottom line in this country is that what it has to do is repeal COOL and when the legislation is evaluated totally and it repeals COOL then we will be in a position to remove retaliation but not until it has satisfactorily removed COOL from pork and beef in this country.
That is the bottom line.
It has been stated from day 1 since I became minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food that that must happen.
I know that the United States Senate is fully aware of this, our stakeholders are fully aware of this and that is in the end the bottom line.
The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote on the bill today, the U.S. Senate is expected to vote today or early tomorrow and, if passed, it will got to the President who is expected to sign it into law Tuesday.
Source: Farmscape