September 13, 2013
US judge refuses to stop implementation of COOL
A US district judge denied request to stop the government from requiring labels on packages of beef, pork, poultry and lamb sold in US stores to include more specific information about the meat''s country of origin.
District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson denied their request for a preliminary injunction, as US meat packers insisted that the latest country-of-origin labelling (COOL) rule will drive up their costs and become a bookkeeping nightmare.
Canada and Mexico are challenging COOL before the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as a US trade barrier, where they prevailed in an earlier WTO case against COOL, which led to the revised regulation issued in May and now under dispute.
US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told a farm delegation that they will stick with the COOL rule. The current WTO challenge will not be resolved until 2015 because of procedural time frames and likely appeals of preliminary rulings, Vilsack added.
Despite Jackson''s rejection on the request for a preliminary injunction, the meat packers'' lawsuit against COOL remains alive. The judge said the industry failed to show it would suffer irreparable harm if COOL was in effect while the case is being decided.
Congress approved COOL in 2002 but it did not become mandatory until March 2009. Consumer groups hailed the labels as part of consumers'' right to know the source of their food, while food makers said COOL could disrupt marketing patterns.
Canada and Mexico said the initial US rule discriminated against imported livestock and helped drive down cattle and hog shipments from those countries by as much as 50% in four years. WTO ordered the US to revise its regulations by May of this year.
The latest rule requires more specific labels as each package must identify where the animals that yielded the meat were born, raised and slaughtered. All the meat in a package must come from the same source, ending the practice of commingling for everything except ground meat.
USDA, when it issued the latest rule, said it would allow six months for compliance. It estimated the 7,200 processors and retailers would spend from US$53 million to US$192 million in "total adjustment costs" to adapt to the new, more detailed labels.
The US Cattlemen''s Association, which supports COOL, said if the preliminary injunction had been approved, the US would have been placed in violation of the WTO ruling. It said COOL will allow US producers "to differentiate their product."