US loses most of appeal on meat labeling

The World Trade Organization upheld on Friday most of its earlier ruling against the United States that labeling the origin of meat products gives less favorable treatment to Canada and Mexico. 

The WTO Appellate Body said that U.S. country-of-origin labeling rules, also known as COOL, provides less favorable treatment to Canadian and Mexican cattle and hogs than U.S. livestock because of record-keeping and verification requirements.

The WTO judges upheld the finding that the United States has the right to adopt country of origin labeling requirements and also overturned the finding that COOL is more trade restrictive than necessary and the finding that it fail to fulfill the objective to provide consumer information because the of unclear labeling.  

“We are pleased with today’s ruling, which affirmed the United States’ right to adopt labeling requirements that provide information to American consumers about the meat they buy,” said U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk.

“The Appellate Body’s ruling confirms that families can still receive information on the origin of their meat and other food products when they shop for groceries."

The United States will have to make some changes to ensure the program does not violate international trade rules. 

While the decision narrowed the number of specific WTO provisions that the U.S. meat-labeling policy was found to violate, it "still reaffirmed the previous WTO ruling that the law must be altered or eliminated," according to trade group Public Citizen. 

“Today’s ruling makes very clear that these so-called 'trade' pacts have little to do with trade between countries, but rather impose outrageous limits on the most basic consumer safety policies on which we all rely,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.

“The WTO announcing that big agribusiness corporations must be allowed to sell mystery meat here, despite U.S. consumers and Congress demanding these labels, is yet another example of outsourcing our legal system to international commercial bodies that push corporate interests.”

The U.S. labeling law, which became mandatory in March 2009, requires retailers to label meat, including beef, pork, lamb, chicken and ground meat, with where it is from. 

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association criticized the U.S. for appealing the decision, saying that the WTO "has been extremely clear that mandatory country of origin labeling is a clear WTO violation."

"Instead of working diligently to bring the United States into WTO compliance, we wasted three months and taxpayer dollars on an appeal process," National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) Vice President Bob McCan said in a statement.

"This did nothing more than jeopardize our strong trade relationship with Canada and Mexico, the two largest importers of U.S. beef.

“NCBA worked with Canada and Mexico to prevent any retaliatory action that could have occurred from the unfortunate decision made by the U.S. government to appeal the initial ruling."

Canada and Mexico argued that the provisions are pushing up costs on their exports, and thus reducing their competitiveness.