Farmscape for May 30, 2013

The general manager of Manitoba Pork Council says U.S. Mandatory Country of Origin Labelling will be among the issues discussed next week as part of World Pork Expo in Des Moines.
A delegation representing Manitoba Pork Council will travel to Des Moines, Iowa next week to take part in the 25th anniversary edition of World Pork Expo.
Manitoba Pork Council general manager Andrew Dickson says representatives will be meeting with U.S. pork industry officials, producers and researchers to discuss a range of issues including amendments to U.S. Mandatory Country of Origin Labelling announced last week.

Clip-Andrew Dickson-Manitoba Pork Council:
Our hope is that we'll be able to get an understanding from producers what the impact of the new COOL regulations that USDA has brought in and whether that's affected their ability to continue to buy Canadian origin baby pigs.
It's probably early days yet.
I'm sure the American processors and retailers are still trying to figure out exactly how they're going to handle these new rules.
We know they're not happy about it.
There was a system in place.
Now they have to make significant changes to how they label and track products through the whole pork value chain.
There's obviously going to be a chill, if that's the right word, through the industry as to what's happened here.
But we will encourage producers down there to continue to try and buy our weanlings and use them in their system because we feel we provide them good healthy stock that gives them an economic advantage in the market place.

Dickson notes Canada has already indicated it feels the amended rules fail to comply with World Trade Organization rules and will be seeking the authority to impose retaliatory tariffs on imported U.S. products.
However, he stresses, the hope is the U.S. will bring the law into compliance without the need for retaliation.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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