COOL Bill Introduced in House
Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Texas, and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., introduced a bill that would mandate country of origin labeling on beef only if it was born, raised and slaughtered in the U.S., the second-such bill Khanna has introduced during this Congress. Gooden said, “American cattle ranchers are being undercut by foreign competition because current labeling standards allow imported beef to be marked as made in the United States if it is only packaged here. Our trade policies should promote American-made beef and put the hard-working cattle ranchers in the United States first.” He announced the bill on March 30.
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The Senate introduced a bill last year that tasks the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative with coming up with a way to bring back mandatory COOL that would not violate international trade laws (see 2109090054), but said if the agency does not, beef labeling would begin after six months.
Seven years ago, the World Trade Organization said the COOL rules passed by Congress discriminated against Canadian and Mexican cattle operations, and the law was repealed to avoid retaliatory tariffs from the NAFTA countries (see 1512210002).