Source: Rita Jane Gabbett, MEATINGPLACE, 11/22/16



As the Trump team begins the task of assembling its administration, interest groups are equally busy assembling their wish lists, including a group of cattle ranchers asking for mandatory country of origin labeling (COOL) to be reinstated.

Bitterly opposed by the meat processing industry and ultimately dismantled by a series of World Trade Organization decisions, COOL is not likely to come back anytime soon. Still, with optimism around change in the air since the election, ranchers who pushed for and supported COOL met last week and put together their list of priorities they are hoping the new administration will consider.

The rancher group R-CALF USA gained support for a plan it wants President-elect Donald Trump to implement during his first 100 days in office at a meeting of about 1,200 ranchers that R-CALF organized along with the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association and the Independent Beef Association of North Dakota.  

R-CALF articulated its priorities as such:  
• Reinstate mandatory country-of-origin labeling (COOL) for beef so U.S. ranchers can compete against the growing tide of undifferentiated foreign beef imported into their domestic market.
• Empower producers to monitor and enforce the rules of competition by finalizing the 2010 GIPSA rules that will finally implement the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921.
• Enforce antitrust laws to stop packers from using their tremendous market power to exploit cattle producers on one end of the supply chain and consumers on the other.
• Protect the cattle industry’s price discovery market, what R-Calf CEO Bill Bullard called its holy grail, by banning packer ownership of livestock and cattle contracts that do not contain a negotiated price.
• Pass smart trade policy that will reverse the industry’s trade deficit and require that only beef from cattle born, raised and processed in the U.S. can bear a USA label when exported.

According to POLITICO, leaked portions of Trump's plans for his first 100 days made public last week highlighted a provision to potentially include COOL in a renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), but members of Trump's Agricultural Advisory Committee quickly convinced Trump’s transition team to opposed the plan.
POLITICO quoted a Washington insider as saying, "No one knows how that got in there, and it is dead as a doornail."

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