Jim Hightower says we have already been found guilty of "imported meat discrimination" ....

[madfloridian]

by a WTO compliance panel.

New trade pacts create secret, pro-corporate tribunals that use their powers to eviscerate our democratic laws

He says his momma warned him not to eat anything unless he knew where it came from.

In 2002, responding to public demand, lawmakers decided that you and I have a need and a right to know where the meat sold in supermarkets comes from. Thus, Congress enacted a simple and straightforward law called COOL (Country Of Origin Labeling), requiring meat marketers to tell us right on their packages whether the enclosed steak, pork chops, lamb shanks, chicken wings, etc., are products of the USA, Mexico, China, or Whereintheworldistan.

This is useful information that empowers us consumers. Whether you have health concerns about imported meat or just prefer to have your food dollars go to American farmers and ranchers, COOL lets each of us know the source so we can decide such matters for ourselves. And that is precisely why global agribusiness giants hate it. Foreign meat producers (especially the US food conglomerates that have moved their meat production and slaughtering operations to nations that pay low wages and/or aren't fussy about health inspections) don't want you knowing or deciding. They've been all over Washington officials, saying they want the #@$&! labeling law repealed.

But who cares what they want? COOL is America's law, and American courts upheld it when the agribusiness powers tried to strike it down. It's also solidly supported by our people--a 2013 Consumer's Union poll found that a whopping 90 percent of Americans favor the right-to-know label! That's such an overwhelming majority that even the anti-consumer Republicans now in charge of Congress are not about to mess with it. So that's that.

.....WARNING: Mind-exploding Outrage Ahead. Unfortunately, that's not that. Unbeknownst to most people, a cabal of corporate and political elites (including Presidents Clinton, Bush II, and Obama) has stealthfully negotiated international trade deals during the past two-plus decades that have fabricated, piece by piece, what now amounts to a privatized world government. It's a secretive, autocratic, plutocratic, bureaucratic government of, by, and for multinational corporations. Most astonishingly, it has been empowered [Second warning: Take a deep breath before reading on] to eviscerate laws and policies enacted by our own elected officials.

And what if a country does not like our country of Origin labeling? Will they sue?

A so-called trade agreement includes a process called ISDS (Investor-State Dispute Settlement). This is a devilish bit of legalistic hocus-pocus that elevates mere corporations to the status of "corporate states," putting them on par with our nation states. It allows them to go to foreign tribunals staffed by corporate lawyers and sue governments to demand taxpayer compensation for a particular national, state, or local law--the offending law could be anything from an environmental regulation to a community's "Buy Local" ordinance. (Under WTO rules, the complaining corporation gets its home nation's government to sue on its behalf, while NAFTA and CAFTA rules allow corporations to challenge sovereign nations directly.)

And from the section called Keeping Our Cool...the ridiculous meat discrimination.

In response, our government adjusted the wording of the labeling requirement in 2013, but a WTO compliance panel recently ruled that the change was not enough, declaring that we are still guilty of (get this) "imported meat discrimination."

[niyad]

1. k and r

[madfloridian]

3. Thanks.

[madfloridian]

2. Guilty of imported meat discrimination.

More from Hightower.

No matter what my momma, Congress, and nine out of 10 of the American people say, the Brave New World of corporate correctness has ruled that elected officials in our Land of the Free are not allowed to let consumers know where their packages of meat originate. Big meat packers operating in Canada and Mexico had long been out to kill COOL, but with Congress unwilling to do the dirty deed for them, they pressured their national governments to haul our COOL into the jurisdiction of the WTO. In 2012, they scored a preliminary victory when a tribunal secluded in Geneva, Switzerland, decreed the law to be a "technical barrier to trade."

In response, our government adjusted the wording of the labeling requirement in 2013, but a WTO compliance panel recently ruled that the change was not enough, declaring that we are still guilty of (get this) "imported meat discrimination." The Obama administration has appealed one final time, but if we're rejected again, Canada and Mexico will be permitted by the WTO's trade authoritarians to "punish" us with trade sanctions on such goodies as the corn flakes and ketchup that US corporations sell to them.

[immoderate]

4. Interesting. Sovereignty, not for territory, but just for wealth.

Hey, corporations are people too. Y'know, they have religion!

--imm

[gratuitous]

5. Corporations do have religion

And it appears that the rest of us may not have a prayer.

You may think the notion of labeling GMO foods is a reasonable bit of information for consumers to have so they can make and informed choice. It may get your goat that GMO purveyors have successfully blocked any legislation that not only would label GMO foods, but blocked other companies from labeling their own products as non-GMO. Prepare to get apoplectic over the rights that corporations will appropriate for themselves, and the paucity of information that will be available to consumers.

[sabrina 1]

6. "This is a devilish bit of legalistic hocus-pocus" .... a perfect description of what they have

concocted to allow Foreign Corporations to circumvent our laws, of have US the tax payers, pay them off if they are forced to obey our laws.

I want that privilege, I want to go to a foreign country and have the right to sue if I violate their laws.

Hocus Pocus is too good a word for this.

It truly is an outrage the way our government continues to sell this country down the river.

[ND-Dem]

10. it won't be only foreign corporations circumventing our laws; it will be US corporations as well.

[MisterP]

16. wasn't the RPG Shadowrun all about the corporate tribunals?

[ND-Dem]

17. I don't know what the RPG Shadowrun is.

[madfloridian]

14. It is truly an outrage.

Even if there are benefits, losing our role as a sovereign nation will override them.

[Faryn Balyncd]

7. This phony "Trade" deal is an attempted end run around every regulation on the books,

... combined with a get rich quick mechanism for the legalized criminal corporations,

... combined with massive expansion of copyright and patent monopolies for the corporations that now hold the rights to works created in the past.



Is this the "Trade" Deal From Hell?


..or have we even heard the worst of it?

[madfloridian]

8. I don't think we have heard the worst.

Didn't I just read that some parts will be kept secret for 4 or 5 years??

It seems to me we would not be a sovereign nation after such a deal.

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Sovereign+nation

It would change who we are as a nation.

[ND-Dem]

9. k&r

[Spider Jerusalem]

11. ....

https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds384_e.htm

The WTO ruling has nothing to do with imported meat; it has to do with Canadian and Mexican livestock exported (while alive) to the US for slaughter and processing. Cattle feeding in those countries, and use of growth hormones and antibiotics, is similar to that in the US, so this is less an issue than the export of North American meat to Europe (where the use of hormones in cattle has been banned for 25 years).

[madfloridian]

12. So the US can still label where meat and vegetables etc come from? For now?

There has been a lot of controversy about that. I think Hightower was referring more to the labeling of food.

This article I found doesn't sound like the labeling of origin of meat is a done deal. Still waiting on WTO.

http://www.capitalpress.com/Livestock/20150326/congress-in-no-hurry-to-pass-meat-labeling-fix

Congress is apparently waiting for the outcome of the U.S.' appeal of a World Trade Organization ruling against its mandatory meat-labeling rule before crafting a bill to avert potential trade sanctions by Canada and Mexico, which complain the rule creates a competitive disadvantage for their livestock.

Congress will apparently wait for a World Trade Organization decision on the U.S.’ controversial meat-labeling rule before considering legislation to stem potential retaliations from Canada and Mexico against dozens of American industries.

The effects of trade sanctions that could harm major Western commodities such as California’s $24 billion wine industry and Washington’s $2.25 billion apple industry were examined March 25 in a hearing by the House Agriculture Committee’s Livestock and Foreign Agriculture Subcommittee.

Apparently only consumers want it, but that should be enough. Once it was enough but not now.

[Scuba]

13. K&R

[madfloridian]

15. Thanks...

Any K&Rs appreciated. Hard to come by around here lately.

[Enthusiast]

18. K&R! This post should have hundreds of recommendations!