A new economic study commissioned by the Meat Institute claims reinstating mandatory country-of-origin labeling (MCOOL) would cost consumers and the meat supply chain over $1 billion annually, with no evidence to support that assertion. Coming from a mouthpiece that has long represented the interests of the nation’s largest meatpackers, this is hardly surprising. For years, the Big 4 meatpackers have been taking advantage of consumers and producers by importing substandard foreign beef and selling it at U.S. prices.
What the Meat Institute does not tell us is that less than 10% of U.S. beef comes from imported live animals, and the majority of those animals go to just three packing plants. They also do not acknowledge that all imported animals are branded with either a Canadian or Mexican brand, that all Canadian cattle have electronic identification tags, and that all imported cattle are accompanied by health papers. This makes it very easy to distinguish imported animals from domestic ones.
Most of the imported beef is actually scraps or trimmings that are boxed and shipped directly to burger plants. These boxes are clearly identified by country of origin and processing plant information provided in the accompanying health papers.
Further, all USDA-inspected plants are already required to shut down and clean equipment, floors, walls and other areas at least once every 24 hours, and many plants clean up after each shift. Again, these existing procedures make it relatively simple to segregate imported and domestic animals during processing.
The meatpacker industry and their allies want you to believe that the World Trade Organization (WTO) imposed retaliatory tariffs because of MCOOL. That is not accurate. No retaliatory tariffs were ever implemented.
Instead, the Big 4 packers strong-armed Canada and Mexico into filing a complaint with the WTO. The complaint initially covered all food products before being narrowed to all meats. The basis of the complaint was that Mexican cattle were being discriminated against because they received lower prices than cattle from the U.S. northern Plains. The truth is that Texas, Florida and other southern U.S. states also typically receive lower prices for their cattle. The difference is driven by environment conditions and genetics, which influence cattle quality—not by discrimination.
The WTO committee, made up primarily of representatives from Canada and Mexico, ruled against the U.S. and authorized retaliatory tariffs if the U.S. continued requiring MCOOL label on all meats. While National Farmers Union (NFU) was negotiating revised wording for a COOL label, Congress voted to repeal COOL just for beef and pork. MCOOL remains in place for other meats, and no retaliatory tariffs have ever been imposed.
NFU argued at the time that Canada and Mexico would not have resorted to tariffs because they had too much to lose in a trade war. Moreover, the price being paid now for live Mexican cattle is still lower than the price paid for northern Plains cattle, even without COOL.
This flawed argument ultimately benefits the packers. When Congress repealed COOL in 2015, U.S. live cattle prices fell by 50%, while retail beef prices in the grocery store changed very little. As a result, the packers made billions at the expense of both consumers and producers.
The packers want consumers to believe they need lean imported beef to mix with U.S. beef. What they do not share is that 20-30% of live U.S. animals harvested are cull cows and bulls, which also produce lean beef that is mixed into burger. The primary reason packers want to use imported beef is economic: they can buy scraps from countries such as Brazil and Mexico at a much lower cost, mix them with domestic beef and sell the final product at higher U.S. beef prices.
With MCOOL, the Big 4 meatpackers would be required to label the origin of the beef and provide consumers with relevant information. Most likely, Brazil and Mexican beef would be sold at a lower price, empowering consumers by allowing them to choose which package of burger they want to buy.
As a U.S. cattle producer, I am not afraid to compete—as long as consumers have truth in labeling and know exactly what product they are buying. Restoring MCOOL would put US consumers and producers first. — Walter Schweitzer, Montana Farmers Union president
