Trade negotiators from the United States and the European Union are meeting in Brussels this week behind closed doors to inch towards a transatlantic free trade agreement, benignly referred to as the TransAtlantic Trade and Investment partnership (TTIP). Twenty-nine U.S. based community, farm, environmental, animal welfare and consumer organizations sent a letter today to United States Trade Representative Michael Froman voicing strong concerns about prominent corporate meat industry demands in TTIP. The aim of the agreement is to “harmonize” standards between the European Union and the U.S. on a wide range of issues that touch our lives, including how our food (meat in particular) is produced and processed and who controls that system.
Over 20 corporate meat and feed industry associations and representatives submitted public comments to USTR last May. Together, their comments demonstrate how these interests seek to weaken standards on meat and animal products that could undermine food safety, public health, animal welfare, worker safety and environmental regulations.
Across the U.S. and the EU, citizens, farmers and civil society organizations are advocating for a fairer, healthier and more humane form of meat production that eliminates the use of chemicals, hormones and antibiotics and which allows independent and local producers to flourish. The letter states:
The growing movement in the United States to rebuild local food systems relies heavily on leveraging local, state and federal procurement dollars to increase the aggregate demand for locally farmed crops and livestock, as well as value-added production of local foods. There can be climate, health, environmental, agricultural, and consumer benefits to such procurement approaches.
The TTIP negotiations could undermine these efforts.
The groups strongly criticized the secrecy of the negotiations where the negotiating text is not even available for our elected officials, let alone concerned citizens and organizations. The groups call on USTR to “to immediately publish negotiating texts on these and other important issues in the trade agreement to foster an informed public debate.”
