{"id":3223,"date":"2013-07-23T14:23:12","date_gmt":"2013-07-23T18:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/info.usa-c.com\/?p=3223"},"modified":"2013-07-23T14:23:12","modified_gmt":"2013-07-23T18:23:12","slug":"cattle-producers-want-to-get-rid-of-new-meat-labels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madeinusanews.com\/?p=3223","title":{"rendered":"Cattle producers want to get rid of new meat labels"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nBy Rob Hotakainen<\/em>
\nMcClatchy Washington Bureau<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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WASHINGTON — After surviving years of drought and watching the size of the U.S. cattle herd fall to its lowest level in more than 60 years, Texas cattleman Bob McCan would just as soon steer clear of the U.S. government\u2019s latest meat-labeling rules.<\/p>\n

For many U.S. consumers, it\u2019s a popular idea: Label packages to let them know what country the meat comes from.<\/p>\n

But with his herd of roughly 4,000 including cattle from Mexico, McCan said there\u2019s no good reason to segregate the animals when he sells them. All it would do, he said, is create hundreds of millions of dollars of extra handling costs that would get passed on, driving up the price at grocery stores.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want beef to become a luxury item,\u201d said McCan, a fifth-generation rancher from Victoria, Texas.<\/p>\n

McCan, now the president-elect of the National Cattlemen\u2019s Beef Association, is among a group of cattle producers and meat companies that has sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture for moving ahead in late May with new country-of-origin labeling rules.<\/p>\n

In a lawsuit filed July 8 in U.S. District Court in Washington, the groups claim the labels will hurt beef exports and are unconstitutional as \u201ccompelled speech\u201d that doesn\u2019t advance a government interest.<\/p>\n

Backers of the new rules, who say labeling can be done at a minimal cost, are braced for another battle with cattle producers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re totally wrong \u2013 consumers have the right to know where products are from,\u201d said Joel Joseph, chairman of the Los Angeles-based Made in the USA Foundation, a group that promotes labeling and products manufactured in the United States. \u201cIt\u2019s not forced speech. It\u2019s just consumer information, the same kind of information that\u2019s on a label of a new car that says where an engine\u2019s from.\u201d<\/p>\n

He offered some advice for McCan: \u201cIf he doesn\u2019t want to segregate his cattle, then he shouldn\u2019t get cattle from Mexico.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCan said labeling is a marketing issue that should be left to the private sector.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not anti-labeling at all,\u201d he said. \u201cWe just kind of feel like the government doesn\u2019t really need to be in our marketing system. It doesn\u2019t have to be dictated to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cattle producers aren\u2019t the only unhappy ones.<\/p>\n

The new labeling rules also could ignite a trade war with Canada, which is threatening to retaliate. Last month, the Canadian government called the new rules a \u201cprotectionist policy\u201d that discriminated against foreign competition. Ottawa said it might respond by imposing tariffs on a long list of products, including pork, fruits and vegetables, pasta, chocolate, cheese, office furniture and many more. The Canadian government fears that its beef exports to the United States would decline under the new rules, with U.S. retailers more likely to reject foreign meat.<\/p>\n

Canadian officials immediately complained to the World Trade Organization, but they say it could take more than a year to resolve the case.<\/p>\n

As a result, John Masswohl, director of government and international relations for the Canadian Cattlemen\u2019s Association, called the new rules a tactic by the U.S. Agriculture Department \u201cto buy themselves another year of discrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n

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And he predicted that the threat of tariffs will quickly affect U.S. businesses.<\/p>\n

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Read more here: http:\/\/www.miamiherald.com\/2013\/07\/22\/3509258\/cattle-producers-want-to-get-rid.html#storylink=cpy<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After surviving years of drought and watching the size of the U.S. cattle herd fall to its lowest level in more than 60 years, Texas cattleman Bob McCan would just as soon steer clear of the U.S. government\u2019s latest meat-labeling rules.<\/p>\n

For many U.S. consumers, it\u2019s a popular idea: Label packages to let them know what country the meat comes from.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[219,231,296,461,517,520,604,704,813,938],"class_list":["post-3223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-company-news","tag-country-of-origin-labeling","tag-environment","tag-joel-joseph","tag-made-in-the-usa-foundation","tag-made-in-usa","tag-national-cattlemens-beef-association","tag-product-of-usa","tag-texas-cattleman-bob-mccan","tag-wto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madeinusanews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madeinusanews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madeinusanews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madeinusanews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madeinusanews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madeinusanews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madeinusanews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madeinusanews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madeinusanews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}