Will Everyone Please Cool it on the Protectionism?!

As negotiations on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) continue, many proposals seem to run counter to the goal of modernizing the deal, and some industry groups are taking the opportunity to advance their protectionist agenda. Arecent op-ed by Mike Schultz, Vice President of R-CALF USA and COOL Chairman, and Martin Rosas, President of United and Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 2 in Kansas City, argued for the reinstatement of U.S. legislation that required meat products to bear a label that identifies the country of origin of the product, so-called COOL (country of origin labeling) rules. Supporters of this type of labeling scheme argue that it helps inform consumers of the products they are buying, and that consumers are willing to pay more for this information. In addition, supporters tend to claim that NAFTA hurt the U.S. beef industry.  All of these arguments are incorrect.First, the COOL scheme that was established by the United States in 2008 was a complex set of requirements that set out when particular muscle-cuts of meat would require a label that identifies where the product was “born, raised, and slaughtered.” On its face, this may seem benign, but the way the legislation was crafted discourages U.S. meat producers from sourcing foreign meat because of the costs of tracing every step of the production process, including segregating herds by nationality.Tracing of a piece of meat ’s “nationality” is complicated by the fact that there...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs