Farmscape for June 11, 2013

The chair of Manitoba Pork Council hopes the release of the list of imported U.S. products that could become targeted for retaliatory tariffs in response to U.S. Mandatory Country of Origin Labelling will prompt an early resolution to the issue.
Last month, in response to changes to U.S. Mandatory Country of Origin Labelling, Ottawa announced Canada will seek World Trade Organization approval for retaliatory tariffs on imported U.S. products.
On Friday, the federal ministers of agriculture and international trade released a list of products Canada plans to target.
Manitoba Pork Council chair Karl Kynoch hopes those U.S. industries that will be affected will pressure their law makers to resolve the issue.

Clip-Karl Kynoch-Manitoba Pork Council:
Canada is known to be fairly soft on a lot of the stuff, very friendly so it's always a concern.
I think some other countries wonder just how serious Canada is about being a hard player in the industry.
This is affecting our economy, this is affecting hog producers to no end, it's affecting the cattle producers so to get that list out and make the decision makers in the U.S. realize that we are very serious here in Canada.
You need to fix this.
It's hurting producers here.
In fact it's even hurting producers in the United States so, to get that list out and show them the things that we're prepared to put a tariff on, it covers cattle, it covers hogs it covers a wide number of things.
There's chocolate on there, there's syrup, there's even some non food products and the idea is to make sure that you cover a lot of these commodities.
You have to try to build up enough commodities to equal the damage that it's doing here in Canada but the thing is that we've put this list out and that gives people an idea what they're going to be retaliated on so hopefully it will encourage a lot of the people affected in the U.S. to come out in support of getting it resolved.

Kynoch notes the WTO process will take another 18 to 24 months.
He hopes the release of the list will prompt the U.S. to settle the issue within the next two to three months instead of dragging it out for another one to two years.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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