Leaked trade agreements and hidden things inside S 510: Corporations plan to end normal farming

[Joanne98]

For OpEdNews: Posted by M. Gardner - Writer



The Canadian Farmers Union wants the Canada-EU trade deal scrapped.


Under provisions in CETA , using saved seed could result in a farmer's land, equipment, and crops being seized for alleged infringement of intellectual property rights attached to plant varieties owned by corporations such as Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta, and Bayer.

"It includes the freezing of bank accounts too, so you couldn't even defend yourself in court. And this is for alleged infringement," says NFU president Terry Boehm. ...

"These are the most draconian measures possible and they would literally create a culture of fear in the farm population where, I think, that ultimately farmers would end up buying seeds every year for every acre just to avoid prosecution or the threat of prosecution."


The biotech industry is facing exposure of the health dangers of GMO/pesticide dependent crops, of attacks on scientists ( even armed ones), and GMOs' poor crop performance across different crop s, public outrage at no labeling of GMOs, media scorn at its humiliatingly poor science, and falling stock value . Is the industry now attempting an end run around all this, by trying to criminalize and thus end normal (organic) farming - its increasingly sought after, healthy, higher-performing competition?


Given the " draconian property rights enforcement measures" the biotech corporations wish put into effect through the Canada-EU free trade agreement, one might wonder.


US farmers face the same assault by their own government on behalf of agribusiness and the biotech industry. S 510, a "food safety" bill waiting for the Senate return, would put the US fully under the WTO and thus harmonize with CETA. It is replete with means to do to American farmers what the EU/Canada CETA plan would do to Canadian ones - and potentially more, including surreptitiously arranging to criminalize agricultural water, manure, essential farming equipment, and seed storage .


41 words inside S 510 would make the US subject to CETA.


COMPLIANCE WITH INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS


Nothing in this Act (or an amendment made by this Act) shall be construed in a manner inconsistent with the agreement establishing the World Trade Organization or any other treaty or international agreement to which the United States is a party.

The significance of those words in S 510 is that they would end the Uruguay Round Agreement Act of 1994, which put US sovereignty and US law under perfect protection . Under S 510, US law would become subservient to the WTO, a corporate organization. Votes in the US would not matter. The decisions on food, energy, health, resources, and US economic policy would be made the very corporations responsible for contaminating food, oil spills, dangerous drugs, theft of common resources, and destroying the economy.


http://www.opednews.com/articles/Leaked-trade-agreements-an-by-M-Gardner-101030-986.html

[xchrom]

1. recommend

[gtar100]

2. This is important. Hard to fathom a group of people sitting around a table

discussing how to stop farmers from saving seeds. But that is the corrupting influence of money making the brains of ordinary people turn idiotic. They are removed from reality and think only in terms of effects on spreadsheets and documents. They need to get out more and see the destruction they are causing to people's lives and the earth. But they won't. Some would go down in flames they started blaming everyone else but themselves.

[Incognitus Czar]

3. That's not nice

I love GMO stuff and biotech, but seizing farmers' property and stuff is kind of a dick move.

[JohnWxy]

4. Recommended.

I saw a chilling documentary about how Monsanto sends out 'enforcers' to find out if anybody is storing seed for next years plantings. The company will sue them if they do. Monsanto wants them to buy seeds every year from them.

[Citizen Worker]

5. As each nation signed onto the WTO agreement two little known and never talked about provisions

went into effect immediately. They are known in WTO legalese as, standstill and rollback. Standstill prohibits the pasage of any legislation that could later be deemed a non-tariff trade barrier. Roll back dictates that each signatory nation must immediately begin an inventory of ALL legislation that could be deemed a non-tariff trade barrier and introduce legislation to either roll back certain provisions or eliminate all together.

The MAI is why there will never be any meaningful regulation of finance or climate change. It's all a charade. And by the way, NAFTA, WTO and all other so called trade agreements were introduced and have substantial support of democrats.

This information and more is contained in the book Multilateral Agreement on Investment by Tony Clarke and Maude Barlow.