Environment

FDA Counts Million Signatures for GMO Labeling As Only One: WTO Treaties Are the Reason

March 31, 2012 by admin in Politics with 27 Comments

The Just Label It campaign delivered over a million signatures, many—if not most—with comments attached, endorsing the petition stating, “I am writing to urge the FDA to require the mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods. I have a right to know about the food I eat and what I feed my family.” It was, by far, the largest petition ever delivered to the FDA.

How did the FDA value it? They counted it as one signature! That’s right. A million people signed a petition and the FDA values all those signatures as equivalent to one comment.

Worse, the FDA responded in a casual and off-hand manner, tacitly ignoring the request that, according to them, had elicited only 394 comments.

Aside from the fact that the FDA is obviously seriously lacking in math skills—which may explain their execrable ability to ignore studies documenting harm from GMOs—the salient point is that there is no limit to what the FDA will do to protect multinational corporations or the depths to which they’ll sink in selling out those they were supposedly protecting: the people.

Why the FDA Refuses to Allow GMO Labeling

Here’s how Andrew Kimbrell, an attorney for one of the petition’s sponsors, Center for Food Safety, describes their response:

They sent a letter saying that they had not made a decision yet and when they did they would let us know.

We know that this is a complicated issue and this response is not uncommon. But legally they are in a very difficult position in not mandating labeling because, among other things, so many of our trading partners require it.

“Our trading partners require it.” That is the real issue behind all this game playing by the FDA. It’s why the FDA is attacking the right to choose one’s food and medical treatment. It’s why raw milk is under attack. It’s why health food, vitamins, herbs, and supplements are all under attack. It’s the “trading partners”. The mistake that Kimbrell makes is believing that it’s the nations that now make the rules.

Who are the trading partners who really make the rules? They are multinational corporations. They have rigged a system in which governments are handing over national sovereignty under the guise of “free trade” and “trade harmonization”. These are done through treaties, primarily through the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the United Nations (UN), and they are pressed on the people of those nations as health mandates.

When all of the rules of trade have been “harmonized”, the concept of a trade partner will be anachronistic. Every nation will have the same rules, so nations will no longer have any say in how trade is performed. They will merely enforce the rules that multinational corporations want.

Therefore, although several nations have banned GMO products or require their labeling, those rules won’t last much longer. Those nations have signed onto the same devil’s pacts as the US. The FDA knows this, so isn’t particularly concerned about the trade rules nations currently have.

Devil’s Pacts

The United States, along with nearly every other nation in the world, with the exception of Russia, has signed agreements that will prevent labeling of GMOs. No, they don’t currently have such rules in place—but they will, and it’s happening quickly.

As documented recently in Gaia Health (The Source of Food Is None of Your Business, Says WTO.), labeling of food products is becoming a matter of trade treaties, in particular two WTO treaties:

Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS)
Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT)

That’s why honey from China, which may not even be real honey, isn’t labeled. Under these treaties, you do not have a right to know what country produced the food you buy.

The fact is that the FDA and the USDA are both heavily tied to these agreements. The USDA even hosts Codex Alimentarius, which is a United Nations part of this process. The Codex Alimentarius agency sets up the rules by which food is traded. Though the rules are tarted up as health regulations, their real purpose is to “harmonize” the worldwide rules by which corporations trade, so that it’s the same everywhere. It certainly isn’t incidental that these rules are also being used to drive small family producers—real farmers—out of business.

The FDA and the USDA represent multinational corporations, like Monsanto, not you or me. And that’s why the FDA is ignoring the will of the people.

How to Get Out of These Rights-Stifling Treaties

The method for getting out of a treaty is remarkably simple: Simply declare that, as far as your country is concerned, it’s null and void. It’s been done before. Bush did in 2001 by simply declaring that the US was no longer party to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. It didn’t require a congressional vote. It didn’t require a special election. The president decided and that was the end of it. (In the EU, it’s likely significantly more difficult, though each nation could pull out of the EU if their current governments chose to do so.)

There is, of course, a catch. Any nation that pulls out of these treaties will be subjected to trade sanctions, and those are likely to hurt. The problem, though, is that the longer we wait to pull out of these treaties, the worse the pain will be.

With every day, the noose of treaty rules is tightening. It’s why Michigan is banning all pigs but those on factory farms run by enormous corporations, and criminalizing the farmers who raise them. A front for corporate factory farms petitioned a state agency for such a rule, and it was granted. The state no longer responds to the interests of its people. It responds to the will of corporations.

It’s up to you. Spread the word. Share this article. People need to understand what’s at stake: our most basic rights and freedoms, the ones so basic that the founding fathers didn’t think it necessary to include them in the Bill of Rights.

The right to choose our own food. To buy food from whatever sources we wish. To manage our health as we see fit. All of these rights are on the verge of disappearing. The tools that are instigating these losses are treaties. Nations, including the US, are kneeling to the powers that created them, not to their own people.