An effort to reverse mandatory country-of-origin labeling, or COOL, also failed Saturday; COOL is scheduled to become mandatory in September 2006. The mandatory labeling provisions require that U.S. consumers be notified of the country in which their meat, fish, perishable fruits and vegetables are grown.
This really suprised me when I read it. I thought for sure COOL was dead but I was wrong. I used my previous post on this subject to lambast Montana's junior Senator over the issue and even with this turn around the rant stands. I think Burns screwed cattle producers over and will do it again given half a chance.
At this point I will point out that I don't think COOL will help the cattle industry any. Meat is a commodity item to consumers so most of them buy it on price, not where its from. A fancy little label saying a USA product will have little affect on most people's buying patterns. Will it hurt cattle producers? The packers keep trying to put all the costs on to the little guy which could hurt if they manage that, but if we can keep that from happening I don't think it will hurt us either so I give COOL my half-hearted support.
The other thing I noticed was the draft rules have been published to reopen the Canadian border to cattle. The border was closed about eighteen months ago when a cow was diagnosed with BSE. A lot of US cattle producers see Canadian cattle as a 800lb gorilla in the cattle industry. They think they disrupt our market and drive down prices we recieve for our product and should be banned permenatly. I personally don't see Canadian cattle as a problem. To me they are like a fly buzzing around the US cattle producers head. Canada has a total herd size around 15 million head while the US has a total herd size close to 100 million head. Canada can affect our markets some but they aren't the big bugaboo that cattle producers make them out to be.
They just don't have the numbers to affect us that much. Our big competion world wide that we need to keep our eyes on is Argentina and Brazil. The number of cattle these countries can raise is staggering and if they ever get there herd health situations under control will flood the world with cheap beef that we can never hope to compete with. The only leg we will have against them is a quality issue so we need to focus on that, not the Canadian gnat in our backyard if we want to maintain a profitable business.
In modern business it is not the crook who is to be feared most, it is the honest man who doesn't know what he is doing. William Wordsworth
