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Public Citizen reports via Common Dreams
[The decision on December 7 by the] World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling against the U.S. country-of-origin meat labels (COOL) that consumers rely on to make informed choices about their food, provides a glaring example of how trade agreements can undermine U.S. public interest policies, [said Public Citizen]. How the Obama administration responds to the WTO ruling will have a significant impact on its efforts to build congressional and public support for the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
In his May 2015 speech at Nike headquarters, President Barack Obama said that critics' warnings that the TPP could "undermine American regulation--food safety, worker safety, even financial regulations" was "just not true". [Obama] said: "They're making this stuff up. No trade agreement is going to force us to change our laws."
"Today's ruling makes clear that trade agreements can--and do--threaten even the most favored U.S. consumer protections", said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. "We hope that President Obama stands by his claim that 'no trade agreement is going to force us to change our laws', but in fact rolling back U.S. consumer and environmental safeguards has been exactly what past presidents have done after previous retrograde trade pact rulings."
In response to previous WTO rulings, the United States has rolled back U.S. Clean Air Act regulations on gasoline cleanliness rules successfully challenged by Venezuela and Mexico and Endangered Species Act rules relating to shrimping techniques that kill sea turtles after a successful challenge by Malaysia and other nations. The U.S. also altered auto fuel efficiency (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards that were successfully challenged by the European Union. After the final WTO ruling against the policy in May, Obama's Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack also contradicted Obama's claim, announcing: "Congress has got to fix this problem. They either have to repeal or modify and amend it."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by rondon on Thursday December 10 2015, @02:11PM
I currently refuse to buy fish from China, Vietnam, or other places with atrocious environmental records (and food safety records - hello, poisonous baby formula). If this really happens, I will completely stop buying frozen fish, unless it still says specifically where it is from, because I absolutely will not trust it.
I'm not really a locally sourced guy (maybe I should be) but this kind of "globalism" that tries to draw every country down to the worst standards of the worst country will absolutely drive me to local products.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @02:22PM
I used to get canned salmon to make salmon patties. The last time I bought one it tasted metallic, it all went into the trash. I have no idea where it came from, it was years ago and country of origin wasn't on the label.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday December 10 2015, @06:05PM
I used to get canned salmon to make salmon patties. The last time I bought one it tasted metallic, it all went into the trash. I have no idea where it came from, it was years ago and country of origin wasn't on the label.
I had a friend of mine who worked in a salmon cannery in Alaska one summer. Even though it was over 30 years ago, he refuses to eat canned salmon to this day. His description was that the Japanese bought the best stuff, sharply descending levels of quality went into red and pink (I forget which is best) canned salmon, and the horrifying stuff goes into pet food.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 10 2015, @06:51PM
I wouldn't even feed that crap to my pets. It was the Costco canned salmon, whatever brand it was I don't remember.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Thursday December 10 2015, @02:28PM
And then this story attempts to paint an opposite point of view. In particular, we do have compulsory country of origin labelling for pretty much everything, I'm sure. (But that might be my country's choice, rather than EU obligation.) I'm certainly happy with the bredth and depth of consumer-protection laws here, so still feel that it's better here than the US - but of course we only get to hear of the US horror stories.
Does anyone who has experience of both show some insight of how the US and EU really compare consumer-rights-wise?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by black6host on Thursday December 10 2015, @08:33PM
Sorry, I can't answer your question. But I can tell you we don't have to worry about sell-by dates on the beer in *my* house :) And some beers have bottled on dates. I haven't checked them all. Yet.
(Score: 5, Informative) by ledow on Thursday December 10 2015, @02:34PM
From:
https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds384_e.htm [wto.org]
"The Appellate Body agreed with the panel that the recordkeeping and verification requirements of the amended COOL measure impose a disproportionate burden on producers and processors of livestock that cannot be explained by the need to provide origin information to consumers, and that the exemptions under the amended COOL measure support a conclusion that the detrimental impact of that measure on imported livestock does not stem exclusively from legitimate regulatory distinctions."
You'll still know what country it's from. They just won't have to do humongous amounts of paperwork to narrow down to a particular cow.
The EU restrictions are just as tough and demand country of origin, and certain tracking, but it just seems that someone overstepped the mark into recording that has a "disproportionate burden / detrimental impact" far beyond just telling you the origin.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Thursday December 10 2015, @03:40PM
I do the same, but not on the conscious level you do. I have lived in China and been to Vietnam a couple of times, and I've seen the regard they have for hygiene and safety. If the Chinese Ministry of Public Hygiene were to put its seal of approval on any foodstuff coming from China, my first thought would be, "What guanxi does the CEO of this food company have with the Chinese Minister of Public Hygiene?" Sadly, that has also come to be my assessment of government in America.
What you can control is food you grow yourself. Locavorism has become a thing because people don't want X numbers of ships, planes, and automobiles trucking their food all over the world. But I see it as food security, and food independence. When you grow it yourself, you know exactly, with no trust factor or BS, what goes into it. Extra bonus, it tastes infinitely better, too.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Thursday December 10 2015, @08:06PM
Have you priced "40 acres and a mule" these days? People living in a city usually don't have much of an option to grow your own.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 5, Informative) by edIII on Thursday December 10 2015, @08:25PM
Farmers Markets, Chickens, Rabbits, and Gardens, FTW.
Progressively, we cannot trust our grocery stores (or businesses in general) with our food quality anymore. I look for the non-GMO branding label and for it to be organic (read: no man-made chemical products). Keeping out the GMO will keep me healthier, and keeping out the non-organic stuff makes it taste 1000% better and is better for the environment. The odds of me buying anything in a can are extremely low now. Unless it has multiple labels on it from orgs I can trust, the answer is, "You would be better off eating this can, then the contents". People that say I may be full of shit, are obviously the people who have only ever eaten the shit. I thought something similar till I tasted farm fresh eggs (literally fresh), vine ripened tomatoes for sauce, and scores of veggies that made me want to eat them more. I made my decision, and it was fully fucking informed by direct experience cooking and eating my own food.
We all want labeling on the foods because we want to make these informed decisions. Those corrupt fuckheads in Monsanto also know, and lament, our decisions as "uninformed, backwater, superstitious" blah blah blah. So basically, we cannot make our own decisions in an argument reminiscent of Climate Change where the "Big guys know best". The only option on the table? Give us less information to make it more "fair" for businesses to compete with one another selling crappy inferior products .
Thankfully, I sincerely doubt Monsanto is going to go through the efforts to infiltrate the Farmer's Markets. That will be sincerely hard when it's not impossible to get to meet, greet, and befriend the people growing your food . Something I highly recommend people do to obtain trust in the food supplies.
Now that the dreaded TPP has been passed (and we are, as we all knew, deeply fucked) they're going to move towards a future where it's illegal to sell your own food, illegal to share your own seeds past 3 miles away, and it will be illegal to become informed about the food you eat.
LOL. I'm becoming so much more of an unlawful rebel the older I get, all because I desire information about the food I eat, privacy in my own life, and to just live a clean and normal life.
All of the arguments aside, people should let one fact sink in above all others: They're censoring information about your food . Information Asymmetry is always bad and leads to inequality when it's applied in economic systems. The TPP has started what we all feared would happen. Not just the corruption of our corporations will affect our food, but the corruption of all corporations globally now affect our food. Yay. The fall of Rome continues.....
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Thursday December 10 2015, @10:31PM
LOL farmers markets...I take it you've never actually lived close to any of the farms that supply a lot of farmers markets, have ya? I have, I've been on those farms and...yeah sanitation? Not so good which is why they don't sell to the big chains but have to sell their products in farmers markets. There is one about 25 miles from my place you can't even drive by in the spring and fall because of the smell of shit, cow,horse,chicken (and if rumors are true some people shit mixed in) with all the chemicals fed to those animals being dumped into the soil because the guy that owns it is a skinflint that refuses to spend a penny on anything he doesn't absolutely have to...wanna guess where all his produce is sold?
So don't think because you are buying from a farmers market that makes the stuff better or even as good as what you get from your local store, because if you haven't stepped foot on that farm you have NO clue as to how they are growing their food.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday December 11 2015, @01:09AM
You may possibly have a point, but around here, we live right near the farms.
Also, having lived/living on a farm myself, grow a pair. Farms are dirty. Eggs come with chicken shit on them. I'm less concerned about the hygiene, and more concerned about the treatment of the animals, and the chemicals used. Additionally, whether or not it is non-GMO.
If you're interested in sterile food than go ahead and keep trying to trust the large chains.... who regularly have their own recalls anyways. So quite frankly, it seems all equal anyways.
That's guaranteed F.U.D. I'd have to go out of my way to mix my own shit in with the shit from the rabbits. People take shits in toilets, and let the water take it to the septic tank. Even with outhouses I can't possibly imagine the farmer thinking he wants to dig up his outhouse to make well fertilized soil for new crops. That's nuts, and more than a little disgusting.
You've also brought up meat, but I'm primarily talking about veggies. I would be hesitant to purchase meat unless I really knew the people, and they had a reputation in the area. Where I live, we have a couple of suppliers, and know which are bad and which aren't. Most of the meat I wish to eat in the future will be my own chickens, and progressively more and more, my own rabbits. I'm not mistreating my rabbits either by feeding them my shit or anything. They even get non-GMO feed, Pandora, plenty of love, fennel, tasty weeds, etc. Other than the slaughter part, they have a really sweet setup.
Can farmers lie to me? Sure. Most of them though are they for the exact same reasons I am. They don't want to eat the commercial shit either, and love good food.
If I ever get sick from it, well, that's the cost of doing business and well worth the lack of financial support being given to Big Ag.
Really, growing your own food and participating in Farmer's Markets is a win-win-win for all of us.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Friday December 11 2015, @03:05AM
You don't know this dude, he nearly got hit by a car picking up a quarter in the middle of a 4 lane highway, yes THAT fucking tight and greedy. I honestly would not be surprised if he cut a deal on the side to let some chemical toilet bunch dump shit on his land, i know he has been busted at least once already for taking nasty dead animals from a disreputable chicken farm and using it as compost.
If you have a really nice farmer to supply your market, that you have been on the farm and KNOW that they are doing things on the up and up? I'm happy for you, I truly am, but you cannot ASSUME that is the case simply because they are a small farm selling on a farmer's market. Oh and for the dumbass that thinks I was talking about sanitation? Look up how many chemicals are being pumped into those factory animals, guess what happens to those chemicals when they take a crap? I do not want to even know how many hormones and antibiotics and God knows what else is in that land.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday December 11 2015, @01:54AM
Do you actually think farms should be sanitized? Like hospitals, every surface disinfected and scrubbed sparkly clean?
Methinks you have a rather twisted fantasy of how farming and nature is supposed to work.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 11 2015, @06:50AM
It's not a problem that your farms have shit. That's normal. What the heck do you expect farms with lots of animals to smell of? Roses? It's not like those animals get and use flush toilets.
The real hygiene/safety problem is your slaughterhouses/processing plants get too much shit into your meat/milk/etc and your gov pushes the problem to the consumers by telling them the solution is to "cook it properly".
Think about why the heck e coli can be in your minced meat and burgers. That sort of bacteria does not normally live in flesh or fat - they live in intestines. If you skin, slaughter and butcher an animal the "classic way" its shit wouldn't be all over your meat. But it's more expensive to do it that way. There are cheaper ways to get rid of the shit of course, but probably still more expensive than leaving the shit in and say it's the customer's problem. You got sick? It's your fault for not cooking your burger with shit in it for long enough.
Dead chickens are soaked in the same water thus spreading contamination: https://www.cspinet.org/reports/polt.html [cspinet.org]
USDA allows poultry carcasses to be placed in hot water baths, called scalders, to loosen feathers and then chilled in large vats of water, a process known as immersion chilling. This allows contaminated poultry carcasses to infect clean carcasses.
Based on a policy change in 1978 allowing "reprocessing," the USDA decided that, instead of condemning contaminated carcasses, the industry can simply wash the contamination off with chlorinated water. This resulted in condemnation rates for poultry dropping dramatically, which means that consumers are eating more of this once-contaminated poultry. While some plants can reprocess poultry and produce a product at least equivalent to one that wasn't initially contaminated, other plants show large jumps in the percent of reprocessed carcasses that are contaminated with Salmonella.
USDA allows skin to be added to ground poultry products. Since skin harbors bacteria in its pores and folds, it can be the most highly contaminated part of the carcass. By permitting the addition of skin into ground product, USDA is allowing much higher levels of certain harmful bacteria in ground poultry products than in ground beef products, which are not allowed to contain skin.
Despite what American consumers have come to expect, contaminated chicken is not inevitable. In fact, Sweden has largely eradicated Salmonella contamination in chicken. Although the federal government oversees and regulates poultry slaughterhouses, for many years it has tolerated widespread contamination in poultry products produced in the United States.
So guess why salmonella is a problem in the USA. Oh it's not a problem if you cook your chicken properly... rollseyes...
Then your people and farms use too much antibiotics. So guess what happens when those resistant bacteria from the shit end up making you people ill? Many in the media even try to make it look like India is to blame for much of the antibiotic resistance (not going to link to the articles). India uses less antibiotics per capita than the USA. Not saying India is doing things right, they aren't but it's a fair bit of misdirection isn't it? Look at the shit in India, China etc, don't think about the real reasons why there's shit in your food.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 11 2015, @03:35AM
That's not what happened.
The final form of TPP has been completed and has been sent to the 2 chambers of Congress.[1]
The text has also been made public by New Zealand for all to read (all 6000 pages).
Before that, it was decided that TPP will get fast-track treatment (an up-or-down vote without the usual discussion).
It will likely come up for a vote in Congress[1] in the Spring.
Watch these pages for a final warning for you and everyone you know to bombard your Congresscritters with phone calls[2] telling them how much you despise that thing.
[1] The way TPP is being handled is in violation of how the Constitution specifies that treaties have to be approved.
(NOT a simple majority vote of both chambers.
Treaty approval requires a 2/3 majority of the Senate; the House is not involved in treaties.)
...and the fast-track thing is just 1 more layer of heinous added to the stink.
[2] No emails: Congresscritters largely ignore those.
A phone call to the Capitol is toll-free anyway.
-- gewg_