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New World Order Title: Congress kills country-of-origin meat labels that most Americans support In the omnibus budget bill, Congress eliminated country-of-origin meat labels for pork and beef that consumers use to make choices about their food and are supported by 90 percent of Americans. It’s a glaring example of how trade agreements can undermine U.S. public interest policies, Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, said. A week after the World Trade Organization approved $1 billion in annual trade sanctions against the United States unless the policy was ended, a provision to kill the consumer labels for beef and pork was placed in the omnibus package passed Dec. 18. Three weeks earlier, the WTO also issued a final ruling against U.S. dolphin-safe tuna labels, ordering the elimination of the popular environmental policy. “T[he] elimination under orders by the WTO of consumer labels we all rely on in the grocery store makes clear that trade agreements can – and do – threaten even the most favored U.S. consumer protections,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. The group is concerned the Trans-Pacific Partnership would dramatically increase the prospect of U.S. public interest policies being undermined. The TPP includes constraints on food safety that extend beyond the WTO, Wallach said. The pact would roll back the environmental standards included in George W. Bush’s trade pacts and would empower individual foreign corporations directly to launch attacks on public interest policies using the TPP’s investor-state dispute settlement regime, he said. The congressional action isn’t a first anti-consumer action. In response to previous WTO rulings, the United States has rolled back U.S. Clean Air Act regulations on gasoline cleanliness rules challenged by Venezuela and Mexico and Endangered Species Act rules relating to shrimping techniques that kill sea turtles after a challenge by Malaysia and other nations. The U.S. also altered auto fuel efficiency – Corporate Average Fuel Economy – standards that were challenged by the European Union. COOL required meat sold in the United States to be labeled to inform consumers about the country in which animals were born, raised, and slaughtered. COOL is supported by 90 percent of Americans, according to a recent poll, but has been under attack by Mexican and Canadian livestock producers and the U.S. meat processing industry. The labeling repeal wasn’t the only action by Congress affecting the beef industry. Lawmakers renewed a provision that prevents the Environmental Protection Agency from requiring greenhouse gas emission reports from livestock producers, which are one of the country’s largest sources of methane and carbon dioxide, according to an AllGov article. Livestock producers account for about 15 percent of the world’s emissions of greenhouse gases, more than come from automobiles. The legislation means the U.S. government has no way of keeping track how much cattle and dairy farms are contributing to global warming. The government does collect reports from 41 other sectors of the economy, making the meat industry the only major source of greenhouse gases in the country excluded from filing annual reports, according to the article. For more information for boomer consumers, see my blog The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide. Poster Comment: Imported donkey dick coming to your local supermarket labeled as burger... Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: Willie Green (#0)
If most Americans support it, that good enough reason for congress to show its ass in defiance and be against it. It's representation democracy.
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