Tyson stops buying Canadian cattle for U.S. beef plants

Tyson has halted purchases of Canadian cattle shipped directly to their beef plants to reduce costs, the company announced. The change is due to the U.S. country-of-origin labeling rules which require labels on meat packages to show where an animal was born, raised and slaughtered, said Tyson spokesman Worth Sparkman in an e-mail to Bloomberg Businessweek.

“These new rules significantly increase costs because they require additional product codes, production breaks and product segregation, including a separate category for cattle shipped directly from Canada to U.S. beef plants without providing any incremental value to our customers,” Sparkman said in response to questions from Bloomberg News.