Would you pay more money to know exactly where the beef and pork you are eating come from? Would you pass up packages if you knew they came from another country? Those questions are at the heart of a lawsuit between the United States, Canada and Mexico.
The World Trade Organization just ruled against the U.S. in a continuing dispute over meat labeling rules. The WTO is in favor of Canada and Mexico. Both countries claim that new, mandatory country of origin labels that the U.S. wants to require on meat are discriminatory and hurting their businesses.
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Glynn Tonsor is a Kansas State Agricultural Economist. He explained, "We basically have increased the cost of importing those animals because you have to do more segregation and tracking and labeling of livestock from foreign origins because we have to do that on the final retail product."
The labels require producers to identify where the meat came from. They were first implemented in 2009 and got even more specific in 2013. But research from Kansas State University found no evidence that consumers want these labels. What's more, Canada and Mexico are threatening to raise prices on other items that are in high demand here in the U.S. if these origin labels are not pulled from the packages. Tonsor said, "One of the things we found before in our prior work is the majority of the public didn't even know we had origin labeling and the reason I note that is if that's still the case, until proven otherwise I think that's the case, it's hard to convince me that changing the details of it is going to an increase in demand if you don't know the label exists."
The U.S. has 60 days to respond to the WTO. They could appeal the decision, change the labels to voluntary, get rid of the rule altogether, or keep the rule as is and face trade penalties from other countries.