Beef producers from across the province are in Calgary for their annual general meeting and say a significant ruling by the World Trade Organization should help boost their bottom lines
For more than a decade, mandatory country of origin labelling, or COOL labelling, has cost producers on both sides of the U.S. border billions.
In May, the WTO ruled that the American labelling violated its international trade obligations and on Monday a decision in the long running saga was made.
WTO has ruled that Canada and Mexico will be allowed to impose $1 billion in annual tariffs on U.S. products, a move some in the industry say is game changing.
"That gives us the ability to put tariffs on products coming out of the U.S, into Canada and the products that are going to be targeted are ones that are very strategic to have the biggest impact on certain areas in the States where they're not in favour of repealing the COOL legislation," said Greg Bowie, Chair of Alberta Beef Producers.
Those in the Canadian cattle and pork industries have argued that the old labelling laws cost them as much as $3 billion a year and say the ruling means many can now recoup some of those costs.
"The value that we can retaliate against the Americans on the mandatory country of origin labelling is a little over a billion dollars, which is certainly under the three billion but probably not too far off of where we expected it to come," said Bowie.
The Canadian Cattlemen's Association, the Canadian Pork Council, the National Feeders' Association and Canadian Meat Council called on the U.S. to scrap its labelling provisions in light of the decision.
International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland and Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay also urged the U.S. to get rid of those provisions saying in a statement that "If the U.S. Senate does not take immediate action to repeal COOL for beef and pork, Canada will quickly take steps to retaliate."
The U.S. House of Representatives repealed the provisions in June but cannot appeal the WTO decision.
(With files from The Canadian Press and Bill Macfarlane)
