Impact of Country-of-Origin Labeling on Bovine Meat Trade

Recognizing that consumers often evaluate the quality of food based on its origin, many countries have introduced country-of-origin labeling (COOL) programs. In this paper, we analyze bilateral trade data of bovine meat cuts to examine whether the implementation of COOL has altered trade flows of these products. We found that the impact of COOL varied widely among the countries examined over the study period. While the market shares of Australia, Canada, France, and Netherlands have expanded as a result of the implementation of COOL, those of Germany and Ireland have contracted.