A
Anonymous
Guest
Lou Dobbs has really been hammering the FDA/USDA/Bush Administration on this...In the days to come he's going to show trade agreements that totally give up our sovereignty in that they do not even allow us to do further safety testing on the imports (considered a barrier in the agreement)...
He's been hammering what he calls "the no beef-all bull" crew of the NCBA/AMI/USDA/Whitehouse-- and flat out accusing them of putting the Corporate traders interests ahead of the US consumers/public.....
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7/26/2007 8:13:00 AM
R-CALF: Report Reveals How Pending Free Trade Agreements Fuel Unsafe Food Imports
Washington, D.C. – R-CALF USA has endorsed the beef section of a Public Citizen report on four pending free trade agreements (FTAs) with Peru, Panama, Colombia and South Korea, which reveals that these specific agreements, as written, will increase U.S. food imports, but limit the influence on food-safety requirements the United States should be able to require from these countries. These FTAs undermine Congress’ plans to counter any possible imported food-safety emergency.
“The way these trade agreements are written, U.S. farmers and ranchers will be locked into a competitive disadvantage,” said R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard, during a joint news conference with Public Citizen and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, today. “As a result, we will continue to see an erosion of our rural communities that are dependent on the U.S. cattle industry because we will be systematically replacing domestic production with larger volumes of imported product.”
R-CALF USA believes that at the most fundamental level, the effect of the trade agreements with Panama and Peru would be that the United States would change its position so that the default becomes open borders, or what Bullard called ‘a borderless America.’
“And then, if there’s a problem with food safety, the burden would shift,” Bullard explained. “The burden would be placed upon the shoulders of the importing country to prove that any food safety problems need to be corrected by restrictions or sanctions. That’s very different than how we currently trade with other countries, where they must first prove that they are meeting the standards of the United States.
“This is what we’ve dealt with, with regard to Canada’s BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) problems,” Bullard pointed out. “USDA considers the default position with Canada as an open border, and R-CALF is concerned that the United States has chosen to favor trade over food safety.”
Brown said he, along with Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., will soon be rolling out model trade legislation that will include food and product safety standards.
“Food safety and trade issues are so linked, and I think there are a number of people that have come to the fair trade movement, if you will, because of food safety issues,” Brown said. “They understand, as many of us do, that when you look at the gains we’ve made in this country on food safety, starting with the book The Jungle, and all that we have done with our regulatory structure for food safety, all of that is jeopardized by free trade agreements that pay little or no attention to food safety, and that’s really what we’re seeing.
“We know that imports of food have gone up dramatically…and that’s generally a good thing because it means people have choices and can have better diets,” he continued. “But it’s less of a good thing if we’re not inspecting those imports, and we haven’t been. We know as food imports have gone up, the number of FDA inspectors has gone down. In 2003, there were almost 3,200 FDA food inspectors – now there are 2,800.
“The problem, in part, is that this Administration believes you can do free trade on the cheap, and you can’t do free trade on the cheap,” Brown emphasized. “If we’re going to pass trade agreements, they need to reflect the regulatory structure we have in this country, and then we need to do inspections – both at the border, and at the point of process. We do neither of those very well. If we’re going to trade on the cheap, the way this Administration wants to do – and has done – then food-safety problems are inevitable.”
Brown said the U.S. needs to handle trade in the right way by hiring the number of food inspectors we need and giving the appropriate federal agencies authority to approve or disapprove countries eligible to export.
“The U.S. has seen our food surplus shrink down to almost nothing,” Brown pointed out. “We shouldn’t be buying food from countries that don’t have that regulatory structure in place.
“We also need to make country-of-origin labeling (COOL) mandatory, and we need to require importers to have insurance for a recall, so that when there is a problem, companies don’t go out of business when a recall is issued,” he added.
Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch Director Lori Wallach said the bottom line of the report’s findings is there is no way to fix our imported food safety problems without fixing our trade policies and trade agreements, as well as improving our domestic food safety laws.
“The current U.S. trade model prioritizes the systematic increase of traded food over safety, and these trade agreements lead U.S. consumers to purchase more and more imported food,” Wallach said. “However, at the same time, these agreements require that the U.S. rely on foreign regulatory structures and inspectors to make sure that our food is safe. Sadly, many of the foreign countries’ systems aren’t up to the task.”
He's been hammering what he calls "the no beef-all bull" crew of the NCBA/AMI/USDA/Whitehouse-- and flat out accusing them of putting the Corporate traders interests ahead of the US consumers/public.....
--------------------------------------------------
7/26/2007 8:13:00 AM
R-CALF: Report Reveals How Pending Free Trade Agreements Fuel Unsafe Food Imports
Washington, D.C. – R-CALF USA has endorsed the beef section of a Public Citizen report on four pending free trade agreements (FTAs) with Peru, Panama, Colombia and South Korea, which reveals that these specific agreements, as written, will increase U.S. food imports, but limit the influence on food-safety requirements the United States should be able to require from these countries. These FTAs undermine Congress’ plans to counter any possible imported food-safety emergency.
“The way these trade agreements are written, U.S. farmers and ranchers will be locked into a competitive disadvantage,” said R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard, during a joint news conference with Public Citizen and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, today. “As a result, we will continue to see an erosion of our rural communities that are dependent on the U.S. cattle industry because we will be systematically replacing domestic production with larger volumes of imported product.”
R-CALF USA believes that at the most fundamental level, the effect of the trade agreements with Panama and Peru would be that the United States would change its position so that the default becomes open borders, or what Bullard called ‘a borderless America.’
“And then, if there’s a problem with food safety, the burden would shift,” Bullard explained. “The burden would be placed upon the shoulders of the importing country to prove that any food safety problems need to be corrected by restrictions or sanctions. That’s very different than how we currently trade with other countries, where they must first prove that they are meeting the standards of the United States.
“This is what we’ve dealt with, with regard to Canada’s BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) problems,” Bullard pointed out. “USDA considers the default position with Canada as an open border, and R-CALF is concerned that the United States has chosen to favor trade over food safety.”
Brown said he, along with Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., will soon be rolling out model trade legislation that will include food and product safety standards.
“Food safety and trade issues are so linked, and I think there are a number of people that have come to the fair trade movement, if you will, because of food safety issues,” Brown said. “They understand, as many of us do, that when you look at the gains we’ve made in this country on food safety, starting with the book The Jungle, and all that we have done with our regulatory structure for food safety, all of that is jeopardized by free trade agreements that pay little or no attention to food safety, and that’s really what we’re seeing.
“We know that imports of food have gone up dramatically…and that’s generally a good thing because it means people have choices and can have better diets,” he continued. “But it’s less of a good thing if we’re not inspecting those imports, and we haven’t been. We know as food imports have gone up, the number of FDA inspectors has gone down. In 2003, there were almost 3,200 FDA food inspectors – now there are 2,800.
“The problem, in part, is that this Administration believes you can do free trade on the cheap, and you can’t do free trade on the cheap,” Brown emphasized. “If we’re going to pass trade agreements, they need to reflect the regulatory structure we have in this country, and then we need to do inspections – both at the border, and at the point of process. We do neither of those very well. If we’re going to trade on the cheap, the way this Administration wants to do – and has done – then food-safety problems are inevitable.”
Brown said the U.S. needs to handle trade in the right way by hiring the number of food inspectors we need and giving the appropriate federal agencies authority to approve or disapprove countries eligible to export.
“The U.S. has seen our food surplus shrink down to almost nothing,” Brown pointed out. “We shouldn’t be buying food from countries that don’t have that regulatory structure in place.
“We also need to make country-of-origin labeling (COOL) mandatory, and we need to require importers to have insurance for a recall, so that when there is a problem, companies don’t go out of business when a recall is issued,” he added.
Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch Director Lori Wallach said the bottom line of the report’s findings is there is no way to fix our imported food safety problems without fixing our trade policies and trade agreements, as well as improving our domestic food safety laws.
“The current U.S. trade model prioritizes the systematic increase of traded food over safety, and these trade agreements lead U.S. consumers to purchase more and more imported food,” Wallach said. “However, at the same time, these agreements require that the U.S. rely on foreign regulatory structures and inspectors to make sure that our food is safe. Sadly, many of the foreign countries’ systems aren’t up to the task.”