Tell President Obama and Interim U.S. Trade Rep. Miriam Sapiro: Trade Agreements Shouldn't Be Secret!


Two new global trade agreements currently in negotiations pose serious threats to food safety, in the U.S. and other countries. Both agreements are being negotiated behind closed doors. The public and Congress, despite repeated requests for access to proposals and final draft texts, have been shut out. More than 600 multinational corporations and industry trade groups, however, have a seat at the negotiating table. And it gets worse. The Obama Administration intends to push the agreements through Congress using a Nixon-era process called Fast Track. Fast Track strips Congress of its authority to control the content of a trade deal and hands that authority over to the executive branch. Congress gets a vote, but only after the negotiations have been completed, and the agreements have been signed. No debate. No amendments. Just a fast, forced vote, too late for Congress to have any influence.

Please sign the letter below to President Obama and Interim U.S. Trade Representative Miriam Saprio. Tell them that global trade agreements that have the potential to undermine U.S. food safety regulations should be negotiated in full view, with input from the consumers, farmers and governments that will be affected by the agreements’ final policies. Moreover, negotiators should not be allowed to do an end run around Congress and democracy, just to grease the wheels of international trade for multinational corporations.

A few facts about the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

• Under both agreements, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) consumers could soon be eating imported seafood, beef or chicken products that don’t meet even basic U.S. food safety standards and the FDA could be powerless to shut down imports of those unsafe food or food ingredients.

• Congress and the public have been shut out of the negotiations, but more than 600 corporations and industry trade groups have a seat at the table.

• Both agreements grant transnational corporations “special rights” that go far beyond those possessed by domestic businesses and American citizens. Experts who have reviewed the leaked texts say that TPP negotiators propose allowing transnational corporations to challenge countries’ laws, regulations and court decisions, including environmental and food safety laws. Corporations will be allowed to resolve trade disputes in special international tribunals. In other words, they get to do an end run around the countries’ domestic judicial systems, effectively wiping out hundreds, if not more, domestic and international food sovereignty laws.

• Among the many gifts to Big Ag contained in the TTIP and TPP? Back-door entry for their genetically modified seeds and crops. Countries, including those in the European Union, could find it increasingly difficult to ban, or even require the labeling of, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), if biotech companies determine that those countries’ strict policies restrict fair trade and infringe on the companies’ “rights” to profit.

• Both agreements would force the U.S. and other participating countries to “harmonize” food safety standards. That means all countries that sign on to the agreement would be required to abide by the lowest common denominator standards of all participating governments.

More on the TTIP and TPP here.



Dear President Obama and U.S. Trade Representative Sapiro,

I am writing to you, as a concerned consumer, about two global trade agreements that are currently in negotiations: The Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Both of these trade agreements have the potential to seriously undermine U.S. Food safety regulations, and render both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. government powerless to protect consumers from contaminated and unsafe, untested food products and food ingredients.

I am deeply troubled that these two trade agreements, huge in scope and reach, are being negotiated behind closed doors, with no input from the consumers, farmers and governments that will be most affected by their policies. Not even members of Congress have been allowed access to the negotiations or draft texts. Yet negotiators have solicited input from more than 600 corporations and industry trade groups, all of whom place a higher value on shareholder value and profits, than on public health and safety, future sustainability of the world’s food supply, or basic democratic principles.

Of even greater concern is the fact that plans call for “Fast Tracking” these agreements, which means effectively bypassing the U.S. democratic process and eliminating all reasonable checks and balances.

I am calling on you both to immediately grant access to all negotiating texts associated with these trade agreements, and open up all future negotiations to a full debate, by the public and by Congress. And I respectfully ask that you halt plans to Fast Track these agreements, and instead subject them to our time-honored democratic process.

In an era where climate change has become a legitimate threat to the world’s food supplies, we need to protect individual states’ and countries rights to enact laws that allow them to protect local food supplies. We should not be granting corporations the power to undermine governments’ abilities to protect the public health of their citizens.



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