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."
Bbbut Globalism! (Score:2)
How can we achieve world peace through global harmony without changing a few laws to suit the suits?
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
My current practices (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:My current practices (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:Ultra Locavore (Score:5, Informative)
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.....
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Re:Ultra Locavore (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Hoist by our own petard (Score:5, Informative)
The US was a heavy backer of the WTO (including having cops beat up and arrest protesters that opposed it back in 1999) because they saw it as a way for US megacorps to not be bound by third-world countries' laws about labor and environmental protections and such. Now they're learning that the WTO also binds the US in the same way, and they might not like the results of that.
As far as Obama's statement that "No trade agreement is going to force us to change our laws," that's nonsense, because the whole point of trade treaties is that they become the law of the land. Indeed, if they're official treaties, they can be overruled only by the Constitution, according to the Constitution.
Feed America - vote Donner Party 2016!
Depends on Your Point of View (Score:1)
I'm not an American so I would replace "that consumers rely on to make informed choices about their food" with ", striking down a xenophobic protectionist law."
Look carefully at the ruling before passing judgement. Note who brought the action against the US. Try to figure out who would benefit most from a COOL law (hint: It definitely ain't the small American farmer, no matter what they think would happen).
What would happen under this COOL law: Giant US agri-business corps would swoop in and buy up what few Canadian and Mexican corps they don't already control. Using clever bookkeeping slight-of-hand all food grown in Mexico and Canada would magically become American-grown.
Re:Depends on Your Point of View (Score:4, Insightful)
This is about making shrimp farmed off Vietnam using literal slave labor indistinguishable from the reputable local stuff once it's in your grocery store's fish case.
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Not a citizen (Score:1, Troll)
I'm not a citizen of the WTO. I say "fuck 'em". Hell, if my government were to ask, I would be willing to plant some terroristic bombs in the WTO offices. Presumptuous bastards, telling us how we are to conduct business.
We've been wishing Jews a "Merry Christmas" for about 2000 years. They don't shoot, bomb, or behead us in response.
Combine this with recent FDA rulings (Score:3, Insightful)
Combine this with the fact that the country of origin is one of the few ways consumers can determine if they're buying GMO Salmon [wikipedia.org], (Panama specifically), because the FDA ruled against requiring it to be labeled as such...just wonderful. Consumers can't catch a break even from our own agencies.
You vote for politicians (Score:0)
but the corporations run the world. Isn't democracy wonderful?
Who wants to know things about what they are eatin (Score:0)
anyways. I say just shovel it in and hope for the best.
How Obama responds (Score:0)
"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)."
Even if Obama doesn't cave to the rulings who is to say that the next president won't? So Obama doesn't cave to the rulings in order to get TPP passed. TPP passes. The next president caves to these same rulings. Obama not caving to these rulings were for not.
As has been pointed out other presidents have caved to these rulings. So who is to say the next president won't cave even if this one doesn't?
He was right, I suppose (Score:2)
[Obama] said: "They're making this stuff up. No trade agreement is going to force us to change our laws."
Was he right? Don't these international trade agreements simply override an individual country's (or union's) laws?