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Should Pasta Companies Be Forced For Label The Country Of Origin?

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Should pasta companies be forced to label the country of origin?
This past week Italy formally asked the European commission to require country of origin on pastas sold in Italy. As many expected, this has caused an uproar with international companies, most notably Canadian, who believe this requirement will cause lessen sales. Italy’s proposed plan is to show where the wheat is grown and milled on the pasta packaging. This regulation would clearly be a detriment to Canadian pasta brands and would also require Italian pasta brands to segregate from one another by country. With margins in consideration, this will surely increase the cost of moving durum into Italy. Italy has been Canada’s second largest foreign buyer of durum in the 2016-17 …show more content…

Four years ago the United States was in a similar situation with Mexico in regards to international meat, rather than pasta. On September 11, 2013, a United States’ district judge refused to stop the government from requiring more specific labels on beef, pork, poultry and lamb products that were sold in the United States (The Pig Site). This served as a victory for defenders of the mandatory Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) policy. COOL, is a controversial United States food and agricultural labeling policy that was implemented and deemed mandatory in 2009. The policy requires that fresh foods, most notably meat, must indicate on the label where the product was born, grown, raised and slaughtered (The Pig Project). It is not a secret that international and domestic businesses operate differently, As mentioned in chapter 1 of the textbook, companies can expand their sales by engaging in international business. In this case, Canada exports their pasta in hopes of tapping into the enormous pasta market or Italy. In fact, according to a study done in 2014 by the International Pasta Organization, Italy is the clear ahead leader in pasta consumption per capita. Italians consume 25.3 kilograms of pasta per capita, while Tunisia came in a distant second at 16 kilograms per capita (International Pasta Organization). From the standpoint of Canadian pasta corporations, having their pasta in a pasta dominant market like Italy is a

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