Activists on Both Sides of Atlantic Denounce US/EU FTA as Corporate Power Grab

Wednesday, April 3, 2013 by Common Dreams
President Obama's plan for a trade liberalization may be blocked
- Jon Queally, staff writer

Obama's proposal for a "Free Trade" agreement (FTA) between the US and European Union is being championed by large corporations, but public interest groups and environmentalists on both sides of the Atlantic are vowing to fight the deal.

President Barack Obama announced plans for a trans-Atlantic trade agreement in his State of the Union speech on Feb 12. But European farmers, consumer protection groups and Internet activists may block an agreement.

Long-opposed to the nefarious role that so-called "FTAs" play in the erosion of state sovereignty, critics object to the way such arrangements undermine labor and environmental protections, creating a "global race to the bottom" in the name of "liberalizing" trade and economic growth.

This newest deal comes at a time of ascendent corporate power and at the height of austerity-style economics and would be the largest between developed nations since NAFTA in the mid-90s.

As the Huffington Post reports:

Traditionally, this proposed political empowerment for corporations has been defended as a way to protect companies from arbitrary governments or weakened court systems in developing countries. But the expansion of the practice to first-world relations exposes that rationale as disingenuous. Rule of law in the U.S. and EU is considered strong; the court systems are among the most sophisticated and expert in the world. Most cases brought against the United States under NAFTA have been dismissed or abandoned before an international court issued a ruling.

But companies have grown increasingly ambitious in recent years, with major outfits including Exxon Mobil and Dow Chemical challenging Canadian rules that apply to offshore oil drilling, hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") and the use of pesticides. In December, drug giant Eli Lilly brought a NAFTA case against the Canadian government after it invalidated a patent for one of the company's medications.

Speaking out against the deal are US-based groups like Sierra Club and Public Citizen. And in Europe, coalitions of farmers and trade unionists are already up in arms about the impact that corporate-controlled trade agreements would have on them.

As Der Spiegel in Germany recently reported, there is specific opposition to US agricultural products—including industrially-processed meat and genetically-modified crops.

"Transparency, freedom of choice and the principle of foresight cannot be sacrificed to the free movement of goods in Europe," says Christoph Then, managing director of Testbiotech, a non-profit association opposed to genetic engineering.

The American farm lobby has long fought against European trade barriers for genetically modified potatoes and hormone-treated beef. Now the free trade treaty will provide them with considerable leverage for cracking the European front. [...]

For example, American farmers use the hormone rBST, developed by the agricultural corporation Monsanto. The drug is intended to increase milk production by up to 20 percent and meat yield by up to 30 percent. But it is also suspected of causing cancer in human beings. In addition, high-performance cows require additional antibiotic treatment, because their mammary glands are more likely to become infected.

The concern for US environmentalists like Sierra Club are centered around the power that corporations stand to gain by the emasculation of the regulatory authority of governments.

The provisions of the agreement, the environmental group's trade specialist Ilana Solomon said to HuffPost, "elevate corporations to the level of nation states and allow them to sue governments over nearly any law or policy which reduces their future profits."

And Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Trade Watch, was quoted:

The dirty little secret about [the negotiation] is that it is not mainly about trade, but rather would target for elimination the strongest consumer, health, safety, privacy, environmental and other public interest policies on either side of the Atlantic.

The starkest evidence ... is the plan for it to include the infamous investor-state system that empowers individual corporations and investors to skirt domestic courts and laws and drag signatory governments to foreign tribunals.

Company recalls ground beef after E. coli reports

By the CNN Wire Staff | August 28, 2010

(CNN) -- Cargill Meat Solutions Corp. has recalled about 8,500 pounds of ground beef that may be contaminated with E. coli, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Saturday.

The move came after three people, two in Maine and one in New York, were identified as becoming ill from a strain of E. coli, the government said.

None of the three required hospitalization, said Cargill Inc. spokesman Mike Martin.
"It was a relief it wasn't more serious," he told CNN.

The USDA says it believes certain BJ's Wholesale Club stores in Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York and Virginia received the products.

The recalled ground beef was shipped June 11 to distribution centers, where it was repackaged into consumer-size packages and sold under different retail brand names. The USDA did not identify the brands.

The recalled beef bears the USDA establishment number "EST. 9400," a product code of "W69032" and a "use/freeze by" date of July 1.

The USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Services, which said it became aware of the problem on August 5, "determined that there is an association between the ground beef products subject to recall and the cluster of illnesses in the states of Maine and New York."

Saturday's statement identified the strain as E. coli 026, which can cause bloody diarrhea, dehydration and, in severe cases, kidney failure.

The government "strongly encourages consumers to check their freezers and immediately discard any product subject to this recall."

The government lists the recall as Class 1, meaning "there is a reasonable probability that the use of the product will cause serious, adverse health consequences or death."

Consumers with questions regarding the recall should contact the Cargill consumer line at (877) 788-4953.

Martin said Cargill is working with the USDA to learn what happened.

"We decided to take swift action to do the right thing," he said of the recall.

What's That Lurking in Your Meat?

Yeah, I'm this close |--------| to going veggie. Don't want drugs in my food unless I'M the one who put them there!

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E. Coli May be the Least of Our Worries
By MARTHA ROSENBERG

Many food consumers worry about pathogens like E. coli, Salmonella and Listeria in their meat. But according to a new government report, they should worry more about veterinary drugs, pesticides and heavy metals in their food.

A new Office of Inspector General (OIG) report released last month finds the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) fails to test for many drugs in cattle, inadequately tests for others and fails to recall meat which is clearly contaminated.

"Between July 12, 2007, and March 11, 2008, FSIS found that four carcasses were adulterated with violative levels of veterinary drugs and that the plants involved had released the meat into the food supply. Although the drugs involved could result in stomach, nerve, or skin problems for consumers, FSIS requested no recall," says the report.

Drugs cached on the national dinner plate may include antibiotics like penicillin, florfenicol, sulfamethazine and sulfadimethoxine, the anti-parasite drug Ivermectin, the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug flunixin and heavy metals says OIG, which oversees Department of Health and Human Services programs.

Of 23 pesticides designated by the EPA and FDA as high risk, FSIS only tests for one says the report, in some case because no established action levels are set. Nor are there action levels for Dioxin, pesticides with cancelled registrations like lindane and fire retardants called PBDEs (Polybrominated diphenyl ethers), some of the most worrisome endocrine disruptors. Pesticides and endocrine disruptors are increasingly linked to the epidemic of childhood ADHD and asthma. Livestock antibiotics, used to produce weight in livestock, with less feed cause resistance and allergic reactions in people and, same say, weight gain.

Unlike pathogens like E. coli, says the OIG report, residues cannot be cooked away and are sometimes broken into even more harmful compounds when heated. And how was your dinner?

A quick look at FDA April inspection letters suggests the OIG report does not exaggerate.

Alan J. Svajgr of Darr Feedlots in Cozad, Nebraska is warned about the chlortetracycline and monensin, two antibiotics, he has "adulterated" his cattle feed with "contrary to the New Animal Drug Application (NADA) approvals for these drugs," in one warning letter.

Shirlee and Thomas Jermin of Templeton Feed & Grain in Templeton, California are warned that they have not disclosed the antibiotic sulfamethazine in their Pig Starter & Grow Medicated Feed and omitted a cautionary label statement to "withdraw 15 days prior to slaughter." Oops.

Rodney R. Land of Land Dairy in Mayo Florida sold a dairy cow for food with 0.2 parts per million (ppm) of sulfamethazine in her liver tissue and Michael D. Martin of Martin Feed Lot in Harrisburg, Illinois sold a beef heifer for food with a walloping 38.855 ppm of sulfamethazine in her liver as well as 0.1781 ppm of flunixin, say other letters.

And Hendrik G. Doelman of Elma Dairy in Rochester, Washington sold a dairy cow for food with 0.441 ppm sulfadimethoxine in her liver and 1.04 desfuroylceftiofur, a metabolite from a cephalosporin antibiotic, in her kidney tissue says another FDA letter.

And then there's the calves. Raymond Wright of The Wright Place dairy in Clinton, Maine sold a bob veal calf with 10.99 ppm of the antibiotic neomycin in his kidney tissue thanks to unapproved use of Custom Calf White Plus NT Medicated Dairy Herd and Beef Calf Milk Replacer says the FDA and Raymond L. Martin of Corner View Dairies in Lyons, New York sold a bob veal calf with 1.83 ppm penicillin in his kidneys. And that's just April.

Bob veal, calves under three days old and weighing only 70 to 100 pounds, represent the biggest residue risk to the food supply says the OIG audit which was sent from Gil H. Harden, Acting Assistant Inspector General for Audit to FSIS administrator Alfred Almanza.

"Farmers are prohibited from selling milk for human consumption from cows that have been medicated with antibiotics (as well as other drugs) until the withdrawal period is over; so instead of just disposing of this tainted milk, producers feed it to their calves. When the calves are slaughtered, the drug residue from the feed or milk remains in their meat, which is then sold to consumers," says the report.

Whereas dairy cows end up in fast food hamburgers, bob calves are put in "value added" veal products like veal sausages and breaded veal patties. Heart rending descriptions of the frail animals, electric prodded into standing at livestock auctions, have appeared in agricultural reports.

Ninety percent of the residue violations cited in the report were found in diary cows, veal calves and bob veal (to whom farmers feed "waste milk" that is "unmarketable" for human consumption) says the audit. Four plants had an astounding 211 violations which FSIS says it cannot properly monitor without a national identification program that is opposed by agribusiness.

Yet repeat violators -- "individuals who have a history of picking up dairy cows with drugs in their system and dropping them off at the plant" -- are widely tolerated by FSIS charges the report.

Two years ago, Americans became aware of cull dairy conditions when they saw sick and crippled cull cows fork-lifted and water-boarded to become part of the school lunch program. Where is the meat identified by the OIG report going?