CHICAGO - The U.S. Congress on Friday passed a broad 2016 spending package that includes the repeal of a meat labeling law in order to avoid more than $1 billion in trade retaliation by Mexico and Canada.
The omnibus spending bill is on its way to President Barack Obama to be signed into law.
U.S. trade groups supported scraping the country-of-origin-labeling (COOL) rule on beef, pork and poultry after the World Trade Organization (WTO) recently ruled they discriminated against imported meat.
Ron Prestage, South Carolina pork producer and President of the National Pork Producers Council, praised lawmakers for repealing COOL. If they had not, it "would have been devastating to me and other pork producers."
The policy requires labeling on meat that states where livestock animals are born, raised, and slaughtered.
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The labeling law, popular with American consumers for giving greater transparency to their food purchase, was included in the 2002 U.S. farm bill. Congress strengthened it in 2013, even as Canada and Mexico were challenging the policy at the WTO. (
