Posted by Bruce from Can. on December 20, 2015 at 09:14:05 from (74.12.68.198):
Never intended to stir up a hornets nest, and I am sorry it has taken me so long to respond to comments from John in LA , 2underage , JD, and others . Dairy chores demanded my attention. Cool was more about controlling markets ,than about package labeling. Allow me to start with the fact that almost all package labeling in U.S. and Canada is the same. This allows companies to ship into either country without repacking or using different labels. This is why you will see metric measure on products , even though U.S. uses standard measure.
Now let me explain Cool using hogs as the product. Farmers in the corn belt for many years fed hogs to value add to their corn crop, just makes sense right. With over 300 million bellies to feed there was a strong market for pork products and many meat packers started up. In the Canadian west, with low population and a long ways to market in the east, and very little hog slaughter , fattening pigs was not practical. When the Canadian dollar is low , like it is now , and is most of the time, buying weaner pigs from Canada allowed American farmers the opportunity to buy feeders at 4 for the price of 3. A growing market needs to be fed, many sow barns were built in Sask. and Manitoba , with their pigs destined to be fed out in the corn belt. Now at the same time as this is happening , many of the large feed companies , are buying up slaughter plants , and becoming vertical integraters. They are contracting hogs , building their own sow barns , and not really wanting to allow farmers much in the way of choice as to how they market their pigs. But to gain complete control over the hog industry , they needed to be able to control the hog market from the sow through to the finished pig. So they lobbied for Country of Origin Labeling . And this meant that pigs born in Canada , and fed out in the U.S. would have to be kept separate form U.S. born pigs. To do this farmers that sourced feeders in Canada would have to keep these pigs separate from U.S. sourced pigs. You can see where this is going , a paper trail nightmare , and a ton of extra work to keep these pigs separate . And you can just imagine an independent meat packer trying to sort these pigs. Finally meat packers would only take Canadian born pigs on one day per week. Then they wouldn't pay the farmers as much for Canadian born , U.S. fed hogs. So the market for Canadian weaner pigs dried up, and Canadian sow barns went broke. Many American hog finishing barns had little choice but to take contracts with the larger vertical integrated companies, a clear win for the multinational companies and their share holders at the expense of the American and Canadian farmers. Is the consumer any the better off? Is the farmer any better off ? Are the folks that used to run kill plants that have been squeezed out by the multinationals , are they better off ? If you feel that the NAFTA deal trampled on your rights and freedoms , get ready for the Trans Pacific Trade deal. The TPP is going to influence almost everything you buy or sell , the medications you take the books you read , and the music you listen to. In know way am I trying to make anyone angry , I just view things from a different perspective .
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