What is mCOOL?

In short, Mandatory Country-of-Origin Labelling (mCOOL) requires beef, pork and other meats sold in U.S. retail stores to be labelled with the country where the animal was born; requiring U.S. ranchers and meat packers to handle Canadian cattle separately from U.S. cattle.

mCOOL creates five ‘origin’ categories for beef sold at retail in the USA:

1. Beef from cattle born and raised in the U.S. may be labelled as U.S. beef.
2. Beef from cattle born in Canada and raised in the U.S. may be labelled as U.S./Canada.
3. Beef from cattle imported from Canada to the U.S. for immediate processing must be labelled as Canada/U.S.
4. Beef imported to the U.S. from Canada must be labelled as Canadian.
5. Ground beef must be labelled with a list of all reasonably possible countries.

Beef sold at food service establishments in the US, such as restaurants are not covered by COOL, nor is beef exported from the U.S.

In a typical year, Canada exports approximately 1.2 to 1.5 million head of live cattle and 310,000 tonnes of beef to the US. Approximately one-third of the live cattle would be further raised in the US (“B” category) and two-thirds are exported for immediate processing into beef (“C” category).