The National Farmers Union today released a study that says reductions in Canadian and Mexican exports of cattle to the United States are due to factors other than the country-of-origin labeling program, and that Canadian cattlemen have not suffered $1 billion per year in losses, as they have claimed.

The study was released as members of the COOL Reform Coalition who are worried about Canada retaliating against U.S. products sent Congress a letter asking that “Congress immediately act to assure U.S. compliance with international trade obligations.” See links below

The World Trade Organization has ruled that the U.S. country-of-origin labeling program discriminates against Canadian and Mexican meat animals because they must be segregated in the slaughter process in order to maintain the purely American origin of U.S. labeled meat.

The Canadians have based their analysis on work done by Daniel Sumner of the University of California at Davis and Sébastien Pouliot of Iowa State University.

Robert Taylor
Robert Taylor, an Auburn University professor who conducted the new study, maintains that his study “uses more robust data sources to assess the impact of COOL on market access.”

Taylor said he found “that COOL has not had a significant negative effect on the price paid for imported slaughter cattle relative to comparable domestic cattle, COOL has not had a statistically significant negative effect on imports of feeder cattle relative to U.S. feeder cattle placements, and COOL has not had a negative impact on imported cattle for immediate slaughter.”

The Canadians have said U.S. slaughterhouses have declined to buy Canadian cattle or paid less for them because of the costs of segregation.

Taylor said his study did not address the practices of individual packers, but the overall economic impact. He maintained that the “economic turmoil” during the Great Recession and the changes in the value of the Canadian dollar are responsible for the reduction in Canadian imports.

The National Farmers Union paid for data collection for the study, but Taylor said in a telephone briefing for reporters that he performed the work on Auburn University time.

Roger Johnson
National Farmers Union President Roger Johnson said NFU would present the study to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in their work on the case.

USTR has appealed the case. If the United States loses on appeal, then Canada and Mexico would have the right to retaliate, but only if they can prove losses.

Johnson said that even if the United States loses the appeal, the study shows Canada has experienced no losses. Congress has directed Vilsack to tell members how to resolve the issue, and Johnson said that Vilsack could use the study to argue that no changes are necessary if Canada has not experienced losses.

The U.S. Cattlemen’s Association, which also supports country-of-origin labeling, said the study proves that the decline in U.S. cattle imports “is linked to the economic downturn and ensuing decline in consumer demand.”

Both the NFU and the U.S. Cattlemen maintain that the COOL law should be maintained because consumers like more information about the source of their food.

▪ National Farmers Union — Preliminary Estimates of the Impacts of U.S. Country of Origin Labeling on Cattle Trade
▪ COOL Reform Coalition — Letter to Congress