United States – Certain Country of Origin Labelling (COOL) Requirements, (WT/DS384/AB/R, WT/DS386/AB/R), Appellate Body Reports issued on 29 June 2012, adopted on 23 July 2012

The COOL (Country of Origing Labelling) measure is a US internal measure, as opposed to a customs or border measure. It imposes an obligation on retailers selling specific products in the United States to label those products with their country of origin. This obligation applies irrespective of whether the products are imported or domestically produced. Specifically, the COOL statute provides that ‘a retailer of a covered commodity shall inform consumers, at the final point of sale of the covered commodity to consumers, of the country of origin of the covered commodity. Both beef and pork are covered by the COOL measure. The products at issue in these disputes are livestock, that is, cattle and hogs. The COOL measure is concerned with ‘country of origin’ labelling, and specifically defines ‘origin’ for purposes of this measure. In the case of meat, including beef and pork, ‘origin’ is defined as a function of the country(ies) in which the production steps involving the animals from which that meat is derived took place. There are three relevant production steps for this purpose: birth, raising, and slaughter. Meat labelled under the COOL measure may, therefore, have one or more countries of origin depending on where these steps took place. Canada and Mexico claimed that the challenged measures are inconsistent with Articles 2.1 and 2.2 of the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade.