Tom, you've made some very good points.
Please add that conversion to metric only labeling will stimulate business
to look at its packaging to make it more efficient and cost-effective. It
also will be much better for the enviorment. It's been done many times
before here in the US.
Regards, Stan Doore
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Wade" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2007 11:01 AM
Subject: [USMA:38942] Re: Discussion on the metric system
> I would love for the next administration,
regardless of the party, to say, "We're going to adopt metric-only
labelling on our products, to make things easier for every other country
in the world to trade with us.".
Completely the wrong way to promote such a change. Indeed, why should a
government go through an expensive upheaval just to make things easier for
other countries ? This will never fly.
Rather, you need to convince people that it's worth changing to metric
because it makes American industry more efficient, and allow it to
complete more aggressively with other exporters. People aren't going to
want the government to cause them inconvenience to help foreigners at the
best of times, and in the current international climate are even less
likely to be sympathetic to this idea. The whole point is to pitch the
benefit of metrication to the US, not to everyone else. Were I to adopt a
completely selfish European perspective, I'd say we'd probably be better
off if you continued to lumber your industry with out of date and
cumbersome measurement requirements.
As for the metric-only labelling directive, the emphasis here is that it
*reduces* the amount of labelling rules, not increases it. Whereas
currently you must provide metric and you must provide colonial, after the
proposed change you have reduced the colonial component to an option, and
have not changed the metric requirement at all. Play to the
get-the-government-off-our-backs lobby.
And keep referring to it as colonial, not "US Customary". There is
nothing American about this system - it was imposed on you when you a
colony, and just as you rid yourselves of monarchs, pounds and
taxation-without-representation, this remnant of your former occupation is
long past retirement.
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Tom Wade | EMail: tee dot wade at eurokom dot ie
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