By Jim Spencer

Minneapolis Star Tribune

WASHINGTON — Having failed at several levels of judicial review to delay implementation of new meat labeling rules, the meat industry has abandoned a lawsuit that claimed the rules violated businesses’ free speech.

The meat industry sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 2013 over new rules that required product packages to list the individual countries where animals were born, raised and slaughtered.

A First Amendment challenge that sought to temporarily delay application of the rules until legal challenges were resolved lost in federal district court and in appeals to a three-judge panel and the entire D.C. Circuit Court. A Feb. 9 federal court notice of dismissal ends the suit. It leaves the remaining issues in the case to potential congressional intervention and to the World Trade Organization. The WTO has said that the labeling rules place an unfair burden on meat producers in Canada and Mexico.

The USDA has appealed that ­decision.

Country of origin labeling, or COOL, has been a hot-button issue for U.S. ranchers and farmers, their foreign competitors, consumers and meat processors and packagers.

U.S. ranchers and farmers hoped to maintain and improve their market shares through “buy American” initiatives that could arise from consumers’ ability to see where their meat came from.

Foreign competitors feared discrimination and loss of business. Processors and packagers worried about increased production costs arising from detailed tracking and reporting the source of meat.

Some in the agriculture community feared threats by the Canadian government that it would apply tariffs to hundreds of American-made products if the country of origin labeling rules were not rescinded.

The free speech lawsuit was led by the American Meat Institute, now known as the North American Meat Institute, which includes Minnesota-based Cargill Inc. and Hormel Foods Corp. The suit claimed that the government did not have constitutional right to force the meat industry to label products against their will.

A Cargill spokesman declined to comment on the abandonment of the COOL suit, deferring to the meat institute as the industry’s official representative on the issue.

North American Meat Institute CEO Barry Carpenter issued a statement:

“While we remain disappointed with the court’s ruling on country of origin labeling (COOL), we agree with the World Trade Organization’s assessment that the U.S. rule is out of compliance with its trade obligations to Canada and Mexico,” Carpenter said. “As (Agriculture) Secretary Tom Vilsack has said, a statutory fix is needed to bring the U.S. into compliance to avoid retaliatory tariffs, and we’re committed to working with Congress to fix COOL once and for all.”

But not everyone thinks the COOL rules need fixing.

In a statement, National Farmers Union President Roger Johnson called the COOL suit’s dismissal “a clear and indisputable win for American consumers and producers.”

“It’s a huge relief to know that common-sense labeling laws, like COOL, can prevail in court despite the deep pockets of the multinationals,” Johnson said.

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