ISDS Case Map
GMOs
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.
