Trade Rules Create Obstacle Course for a Better Food System
Trade Rules Create Obstacle Course for a Better Food System
These trade deals are another way to place our nation’s food safety in the hands of a few food corporations, to diminish the public’s role in ensuring safe food and to weaken the rights of consumers to know what’s in their food. (Photo: Antoine.Couturier/flickr/cc)
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While the lack of transparency makes it difficult to know the details, free trade agreements are not designed to make our food system safer. They are designed to increase trade by multinational corporations. And, by design, they create an obstacle course for new rules on food safety.
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First, we have rules on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standards that require that any food safety rules be based on sound science and be the least trade restrictive possible. In practice, these requirements mean that rather than proving that food additives or pesticides are safe before they enter our food system, they have to be proven unsafe before they’re taken out. And regulators are forced to look at what’s most trade-friendly rather than what’s best for public health. Second, there are rules on Regulatory Coherence. We know more about what’s in TTIP, but even leaked TPP text from a few years ago shows that each country would set in place a process to vet new regulations and conduct cost-benefit analyses that won’t account for the true benefits for public health and environmental protection.
Second, there are rules on Regulatory Coherence. We know more about what’s in TTIP, but even leaked TPP text from a few years ago shows that each country would set in place a process to vet new regulations and conduct cost-benefit analyses that won’t account for the true benefits for public health and environmental protection.
Third, there is Investor-State Dispute Settlement, which gives foreign companies the right to sue governments over laws that affect their expected profits. Even if a new rule makes it through those first two obstacles, it could run squarely into a lawsuit from investors. This could be used to challenge any laws, state or federal.
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How would this play out? Say we have a new rule on food safety or an emerging technology like nanotechnology in food. First, regulators would have to prove that the science is definitive, and the least trade restrictive possible. Then they have to pass through the hurdles of Regulatory Coherence, collect comments and prove it’s the most cost-effective option. Then, if it does pass, any company alleging damages could use the data on costs gathered in the impact assessment as evidence for an investor-state lawsuit. It will become harder and harder to make any new rules that protect public health and the environment.
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http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/05/17/trade-rules-create-obstacle-course-better-food-system
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