It is time for COOL
September 11, 2025
By Gilles Stockton
It is long past time for the opponents of Country-of-Origin Labeling (COOL) to just give it up. All of the arguments used to obstruct and delay the implementation of the retail labeling of beef are proven hollow and false. The latest anti-COOL op/ed by Nevil Speer, (“COOL: Facts vs. Feelings,” Beef, September 3, 2025) is simply silly.
Mr. Speer’s argument seems to be that labeling is not needed because current cattle prices are higher than they were in 2013 to 2015. He ignores the 40% collapse of the cattle markets following the rescinding of COOL in 2015. That price collapse lasted for years and cost ranchers and feeders billions of dollars.
We all know that cattle markets go up and down for a variety of reasons, and that there are always a multitude of factors at play. Changes in cattle numbers, beef demand, feed costs, interest rates, drought, imports, and monopoly rents all have effects. But clearly our brief experiment with the labeling of beef did have a positive impact on cattle markets and the elimination of that requirement did result in a decrease in cattle prices. If this had not been the case then the political pressure to rescind COOL would not have been so intense.
COOL will not repair all of the dysfunction in the cattle markets. Low cattle numbers and high demand are currently contributing to high prices and if you are a cow/calf rancher the prices this year are unbelievable. But if you are an independent feeder, you must be losing a lot of sleep. However, if you have been raising cattle for a while, you know how fast the market can turn around.
Over the last decade we have seen the exit of some 50,000 independent feeders. Chances are quite a few less will still be in business after this cycle of high calf prices is over. Remember, it is the independent feeders who make our market for calves. What is clearly happening in the cattle industry is the consolidation of the feeding sector into a small number of gigantic feeding concerns, financed by Wall Street money, and aligned with the big four packers.
The publicly derived market for fat cattle is getting thinner and thinner. Last October, 2024, USDA released a notice for advanced rulemaking “Price Discovery and Competition in Markets for Fed Cattle.” On page 8, USDA states:
“… in three out of the country’s five USDA-designated procurement regions, the cash negotiated share is significantly lower than 20 percent, reaching as low as 12.5 percent of total cattle sales in the Kansas (KS) region, 8.3 percent in the Colorado (CO) region, and 2.6 percent in the Texas – Oklahoma – New Mexico (TX-OK-NM) region.”
Independent feeders in the northern Midwest are in danger of losing their market access unless they align directly with a packer and agree to sell through a non-priced captive supply agreement. This is called vertical integration and this is what happened first to the chicken industry and then to hogs.
As a rancher, don’t think for a minute that you are immune from vertical integration. Tyson experimented with a fully vertically integrated procurement system called Brazen Beef. Walmart has now entered the market with a branded birth to retail product. They don’t necessarily want to own the land or the mother cows, but they do want to control the genetics, the production practices, and you.
The incentive, at least initially, will be a premium for using their bulls, their prescribed production practices (such as no implants, or antibiotics), and their approved feedlots. Presumably other inducements such as low interest financing will be available – if not already so. At first, they will base the price on the public market. But as we see in the quote from USDA (above), this is more and more derived from diminishing public pricing for fat cattle. The final stage, as can be attested by poultry and hog producers, is no public market at all.
Where does this leave us with COOL? Clearly this is the right thing for our country. Consumers have the right to know the origin of all of their purchases – including beef. Close to 90% of them say they would like to know and are surprised to learn that they are not allowed. Would COOL make a difference? Probably so, because it did back in 2013 to 2015. Where it might help first is in the growing demand for grass-fed beef. American producers are shut out of their own market by imports, which account for 70 to 80 percent of the grass-fed sales. Without COOL, consumers have no way of knowing. With COOL they will have the opportunity to demand American beef.
It is time for Congress to reinstate COOL and long past time for Nevil Speer and other packer apologists to just give it up. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (202 224-2321) is the sponsor of the American Beef Labelling Act, and Representative Harriet Hageman (202 225-2311) the sponsor of the House version. You should contact them and tell them that you approve, and if your senator or representative is not a co-sponsor, you should let them know that you are not happy. It is long past time that retail beef proudly proclaims – Born, Raised, and Processed in the USA.
Gilles Stockton
Stockton Ranch
Grass Range, Montana
406 428-2183
gillesstockton@gmail.com