When “Made in America” isn’t really: Country-of-origin labeling for beef

This year’s COOL legislation comes amid escalating trade disputes between the U.S. and 60 other countries that President Donald Trump has placed tariffs on, including major beef suppliers Canada and Mexico. In March, 25-percent tariffs were enacted on nearly all Canadian and Mexican exports.

Some beef ranchers like Montana’s Jack Owen are optimistic about the tariffs, saying they could drive consumer demand for American-made beef if imported beef is more expensive, but cattlemen across the border disagree.

“The United States and Canada have the largest two-way trade in live cattle and beef in the world,” Nathan Phinney of the Canadian Cattle Association said in a press release. “American-born cattle are fed in Canadian feedlots before returning to the United States for processing. Tariffs would greatly increase the cost of processing cattle and ultimately the cost of beef on both sides of the border.”

That could be the case for ranchers like Travis Anderson and Karen Perry-Anderson, a husband-and-wife duo who grow wheat and raise cattle in Benson County, North Dakota. “We are price takers, not price makers,” Perry-Anderson says. Cattle prices are set by factors like market demand and supply levels. “We don’t get to say, ‘here’s what I want to sell my cow for.’ We are basically a cog in the wheel,” she says.

Still, they’re advocates for mandatory COOL because they see it as a way to level the playing field for smaller producers. Between 2017 and 2022, an estimated 107,000 beef cattle farms and ranches either retired or went out of business, according to a USDA cattle and calves census. The average age of a farmer rose to 58.1 years old in the 2022 agriculture census, with fewer young farmers and ranchers to replace them.

As the number of small and mid-size producers declines, so does the strength of the country’s food system, according to Perry-Anderson. “The reason you need a diverse spread across the country of small and medium beef producers is that it creates food security,” she says. “Climate change or disease can hit anywhere. So the more diversity from all of those producers, the safer and better your beef is, and [the cows are] treated better.”

The value of a label

Every country has different rules that mandate how livestock can be treated. In the U.S., for example, there are some hormones, antibiotics and insecticides that are highly regulated or banned altogether. But just because a certain chemical is banned in the U.S. doesn’t mean it’s not used in other countries that export meat into the U.S., which is one reason why origin labeling can be useful for consumers.

But most consumers aren’t preoccupied by where their meat comes from. That’s according to Glynn Tonsor, a professor at the University of Kansas who runs the Meat Demand Monitor, a monthly consumer preference survey that’s funded by the Pork and Beef Checkoffs.

Tonsor says origin labeling is usually at the bottom of the priority list that drives purchasing behavior in the grocery store. Price, taste, freshness and safety usually make it to the top of the priority list, he says.

“Even when we had mandatory country-of-origin labeling, the minority of the public even knew we had it,” Tonsor says. “So recognition of the law when it was there was low and there was no evidence of a demand benefit, for both beef and pork.” The survey does not ask why consumers rank the categories the way they do.

Nevertheless, the legislation could still be useful for ranchers like Owen, who says mandatory COOL for beef helped him make more money when it was enacted in 2013.

“They killed our COOL law and our prices immediately dropped,” Owen says.

There have been several efforts to reinstate mandatory COOL since 2015, but each reintroduction has failed despite bipartisan congressional support. According to reporting from DTN, there could be a better chance that the American Beef Labeling Act passes this year because it’s co-sponsored by new Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), but as of this writing, the bill has yet to be introduced on the Senate floor.