Farmscape for May 22, 2015

The general manager of Manitoba Pork says changes to U.S. Mandatory Country of Origin Labelling proposed by Congress are cause for optimism, but there are still several hurdles that must be cleared.
On the heels of the final World Trade Organization ruling that U.S. Mandatory Country of Origin Labelling discriminates against livestock imported from Canada and Mexico, in violation of U.S. international trade obligations, the U.S. House of Representatives Agriculture Committee has approved a bill to repeal labeling requirements for beef, pork and chicken.
Andrew Dickson, the general manager of Manitoba Pork says the speed with which Congress has responded has come as a surprise but the bill still needs to go to Congress for a vote and we haven't yet seen a response from the Senate Agriculture Committee.

Clip-Andrew Dickson-Manitoba Pork:
We know that there's some strong feelings about COOL amongst some of the senators.
There's strong supporters for it and there's some that think it needs to be repealed, so that will be a step, which we'll probably hear something on that in the next couple of weeks as to what the senate is going to do.
In the U.S. system both houses have to propose legislation, it comes together once it's got voted on in both houses, the Representatives and in the Senate and then it comes to a thing what they call conference.
The two bills are merged in a committee.
There's a conference committee where they get together, sort the differences out, come to an agreement and then a joint bill is then brought back to both houses for voting on so this is going to take some time and it could easily take us into the fall.

Dickson says right now they're talking about repealing the legislation but through the process people might try to add something that could bring us back to a position other than repeal.
None the less, he says, things have never looked so good in terms of getting this resolved so, if everything goes right, there's a possibility this could be fixed by Christmas.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council