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from
NaturalSociety Website
How does defeating one of the biggest fraudulent trade agreements supported by, ...and the politicians they own sound to you?
Just in case you aren't familiar with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP or TAFTA), they are huge multinational 'trade' deals written by corporations, which are being pushed by the White House and many of our politicians in order to support the ongoing monopoly of our food supply.
They are toxic, just like the products these companies sell, but you can stop them with a twitter storm and grass-roots activism.
If you aren't on Twitter, you can also sign a petition or post to one of many Facebook pages, telling Congress and our government that you don't support trade agreements which ravage the environment, kill farmer's wages, and support toxic GM agricultural practices.
The TPP is simply undemocratic. It threatens all our founding fathers worked to set up for the Republic.
If the TPP passed, it would supersede and undermine U.S. federal and state laws, including FDA and Department of Agriculture rules and regulations. It would compel sales of globalized commodified food of uncertain and likely damaging origin, dangerous pesticides, and untested genetic and molecular content on consumers.
Your choice will be gone, and even a meaningful glance at a label will be either pointless or will deliberately misinform consumers. As many of us suspected all along, labeling is just part of the problem.
There will be no alternative to your lack of choice under TPP.
You can also pass around this information, which makes the TPP more transparent.
Don't let Monsanto, et al, run over your rights even more than they already have. If you don't want to eat GMOs without even having the knowledge you've done so, this trade agreement must be stopped.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership Means... October 2013 from Wetlands-Preserve Website
Your ability to control what you eat, or even know what is in the food you eat, will be gone if the secret Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) currently being negotiated in secret sessions among the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim countries is passed.
The
Obama
administration, guided
by Monsanto and other agribusiness and
pharmaceutical companies, is pushing for rules that put corporate greed
ahead of food safety and consumers' right to know what we're eating.
Part of this plan involves companies like Monsanto inducing the U.S. to put their preferred intellectual property, environmental, food safety and capital-markets laws into force.
This will benefit only Big Ag and Big Pharma by allowing the cultivation of genetically modified organisms in all TPP countries and will also act to prevent mandatory GMO labeling in order to integrate GMOs into the food supply while removing traceability and accountability.
As a result, "inconvenient" U.S. environmental,
food safety and labeling laws and rules will be overruled by Monsanto under
the TPP without a direct democratic vote on any issue.
Choice will be gone, and even a meaningful glance at a label will be either pointless or will deliberately misinform consumers.
There will be no alternative to your lack of
choice under TPP.
A primary purpose of GMOs, which have lower yields per hectare than traditional methods of agriculture, is to force farmers to buy more Roundup, a pesticide made by Monsanto.
Increased use of Roundup has pollutes streams, aquifers, drinking water, encouraged "super weeds" to develop genetic resistance to glyphosate, and posed uncertain health risks to humans and others.
Genetically engineered foods have not been adequately tested, nor have the Monsanto pesticides that are sold along with GMO seeds.
The TPP will result in increased pesticide use,
environmental and food contamination.
The FDA does not require safety assessments of
GMO foods and does not review all GMO products hitting the market. FDA
guidelines are entirely voluntary and the patent holders themselves
determine whether their products "warrant analytical or toxicological
tests."
Under the TPP, a world market concentrated in the hands of a few multinational corporations will supplant the democratic process.
Pressure from U.S. corporations in previous bilateral trade negotiations has already caused,
...to back down or remove GMO import restrictions.
Big Ag has also demanded the U.S. government use the proposed TPP to force other countries such as,
...to allow field testing of GMOs and removing
labeling restrictions that disclose GMO content.
The U.S. biotechnology lobby led by Monsanto is pushing for no GMO labeling.
All TPP members will be required to standardize sanitary measures.
This does not mean the best or safest standard, but the one that will commodify food the most to remove production and labeling standards disclosing GMOs, country of origin, and compliance with environmental, safety and minimum-wage laws.
The race to the bottom will mean that the lowest
food safety and environmental standards will be the standards adopted -
anything stricter would be eliminated as "barrier" to "free trade" and would
constitute an illegal "confiscation" of corporate profits.
Although a handful of multinational corporations are already attempting control the world's food supply, the TPP would accelerate this process.
The "investor-state provision" contained in TPP - requirements that corporate profits be given the highest priority in any dispute with a rule, law or regulation - would enable multinational corporations to challenge the laws and rules of signatory governments directly.
Any regulation that a multinational corporation
claims will reduce the profits it expects from an "investment" will be
challenged in secret arbitration tribunal controlled by corporate elites and
in which lawyers who represent corporations in investor-state disputes sit
in judgment!
Eli Lilly claims the denial of a patent is an illegal "expropriation of its property rights" under NAFTA. The proposed rules of TPP are even more tilted in favor of multinational corporations than are the rules of NAFTA.
The TPP will allow more of these lawsuits that
can invalidate federal and state regulations, with no restrictions on what
constitutes an "investment."
Already weak U.S. environmental and consumer-safety laws would be further weakened.
Some GMO foods are already allowed in some TPP
countries but not yet allowed in the U.S. because federal regulators have
not determined that these GMO foods are "safe" for human consumption. Once
the
One of the 12 countries in TPP negotiations, Vietnam, has some of the last untouched rainforest on earth.
Allowing GMO crops will result in clear-cutting much of that forest to grow GMO crops upon principles of economies of scale. The risk of cross-pollination of GMO pollen with wild flora will occur and have unknown consequences on the plants and animals that eat them in fragile ecosystems.
Already, in the U.S. and Canada, farmers report contamination of their crops from GMO strains being used on neighboring lands.
Incredibly, Monsanto then sues these farmers
for illegal use of their patents!
Monsanto already controls about 90 percent of the global GMO seed market - giving it a tremendous monopoly power to control supply and set prices.
The monoculture caused by the standardization of crops from GMO seeds will devastate rural communities, biodiversity and the environment, and leave GMO crops immunologically exposed to crop viruses.
Under the TPP, Monsanto would be allowed to add other crops such as alfalfa to the line of its "Roundup Ready" products - these are crops that are genetically engineered to be able to withstand heavy application of Monsanto's Roundup pesticides.
As insects become increasingly immune to Roundup, farmers drastically increase the amount of Roundup pesticides they apply to their lands.
This not only degrades the soil, it send more
pesticide runoff into groundwater and downstream rivers, creating
environmental devastation.
The elimination of protective tariffs will drive small farmers and peasants off their land because they will not be able to pay the finance costs of GMO seeds or sell non-"standardized" crops and this will destroy heirloom brands and biodiversity.
Access to "local grown" food will end. Big Ag
has already started a "land grab" to consolidate its control over both
production and distribution.
You've probably heard that President Obama appointed Monsanto's former vice-president for public policy as deputy commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and that he signed the Monsanto Protection Act.
But did you know that he appointed (Islam Siddiqui) a lobbyist for Croplife, an industry group representing Monsanto, as his chief agriculture negotiator in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the branch of government negotiating TPP and TAFTA, a TPP-style agreement with the European Union?
The Obama administration is not only driving TPP and TAFTA, but is calling on Congress to vote to grant the President Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority.
According to Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch,
Thus, Congress will be stripped of the power to
amend TPP to remove it's most egregious pro-Monsanto, anti-consumer
provisions.
Let your Rep know that you want Congress to maintain its power to amend trade agreements in order to remove or modify provisions that weaken food safety standards. Let them know that safe food is more important than Monsanto's greed!
You can find out who represents you in Congress and find their contact information at http://gjae.org/leg.
When you call, ask to speak to your Representative's legislative assistant on trade.
To learn more about TPP, TAFTA, and Fast Track and find out about additional actions you can take to stop them, contact,
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