GMOs
Genetically modified organisms
The US-Sri Lanka TIFA Council discussed issues affecting US exports, such as Sri Lanka’s agricultural biotechnology policies, import tariffs, intellectual property rights protection, and transparency in government procurement.
The United States is using bilateral trade agreements to arm-twist weaker countries into accepting its food safety standards as a tool to expand the market control of US corporations. South Korea is the latest victim.
Hundreds of Costa Rican indigenous people began a protest against the Free Trade Agreement between Central America, the Dominican Republic and the United States. They accused the FTA of imposing the use of patented seeds that prevent traditional crops and warned that the use of transgenic seeds from the United States would affect ancestral crops closely linked to the people’s view of the world and spirituality.
Negotiated on the sidelines of the US-Korea FTA, in March 2007.
India finds itself increasingly on the defensive in agricultural trade for permitting field trials across the country in a host of genetically modified food crops — rice, brinjal, okra, potato, tomato and groundnuts — and thereby exposing conventional crops to the risk of transgenic contamination. A case in point is a rather dodgy no-contamination certificate that the regulator, Genetic Engineering Approval Committee, was forced to give two months ago in response to a restriction imposed by Russia on import of rice, groundnuts and sesame seeds from India.
Corporate globalization, savagely embodied by NAFTA, is not just a threat to Mexican farmers and rural villagers. The economic, health, and social damage created by industrial agriculture, corporate globalization, and the patenting and gene-splicing of transgenic plants and animals, are inexorably leading to universal "bioserfdom " for farmers, deteriorating health for consumers, a destabilized climate (energy intensive industrial agriculture and long-distance food transportation and processing account, directly or indirectly, for 40% of all climate-disrupting greenhouse gases), tropical deforestation, and a rapid depletion of oil supplies.
Cheap US corn will flood into Mexico in January when trade barriers are lifted under NAFTA, pitting local farmers against each other over how to protect the crop that has fed Mexico for thousands of years.
One outcome of the Indo-US deal on Agriculture appears to be the deregulation of the GM foods sector.
Given the interest generated with regard to the US-India nuclear deal, it is time to express our concerns on the US-India Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture, too, and not let it be implemented in a business-as-usual attitude.
The US government is working to deny South Koreans the right to local food and to undermine their domestic food safety laws through the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA).
A Joint Statement from Australian and Japanese people
The labelling of genetically modified (GM) goods within Malaysia has come further under the spotlight this week as the industry remains torn between its proposed bio-safety laws and free trade agreements between the US.
Rice farmers in northern Peninsular Malaysia have another reason to call on the Government to quit the on-going Free Trade Agreement negotiations with the United States. Besides the concern over highly subsidised US rice competing with locally produced rice, there is fear of the US dumping the Liberty Link 601 (LL601) contaminated rice here.
Malaysia will not compromise on mandatory labelling for genetically-modified (GM) foods or products in its negotiations with the US for a Free Trade Agreement (FTA), according to
Natural Resources and Environment Minister Datuk Seri Azmi Khalid.
BIO congratulates US Chief Agricultural Negotiator Richard Crowder and his staff for negotiating a separate understanding on several agricultural biotechnology issues. The FTA will go a long way in providing additional market access opportunities in Korea for US biotechnology companies.
Dr. Michael K Hansen, from US Centre of Consumer Policy, advises a cautious attitude towards an FTA with the US as the US has a hidden agenda in seeking to protect its farmers who now face more than RM4.6 billion in losses due to the lack of demand for GE rice.
The South Korean government pledged to ease quarantine rules on products containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) under a free trade agreement with the United States struck on April 2. But while negotiations were underway on the deal, the government denied it was discussing the topic.
South Korea has reportedly exempted US foods containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) from safety tests in the Korea-US free trade agreement struck on April 2, a move that Korean environmentalists criticised as the government "selling off" the health of the nation.
Consumers Association of Penang is extremely concerned and anxious that Malaysia’s Biosafety Bill and an amendment to the Food Regulations are now threatened by proposals made in the negotiations for a free trade agreement with the United States.
The Malaysian government has been urged not to bend to US pressure, under their bilateral FTA talks, to scrap its proposed laws that would bring in mandatory labeling of genetically-modified (GM) foods.
