Nexus - 1503 - New Times Magazine-pages

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Planting the "Garden of Earthly Delights" drafted to solve this problem, and it should be in place for that On | January 1995, the WTO was officially established, with purpose. Developing-country demands, however, were powers to enforce its corporate-written laws on member states. "ambushed by the powerful organized government and US agribusines already dominant, but it now had a new, agribusiness lobby". It sabotaged talks and insisted biosafety unelected, supranational body to advance its private agenda on a measures be subordinate to WTO trade rules favouring global scale. WTO is a "policeman" for global free trade and a developed states. As a result, talks collapsed, safety concerns predatory "battering ram for the trillion-dollar annual world were ignored and the path was cleared for the unrestricted spread agribusiness" part of it for its giants. Its rules were written with of GMO seeds worldwide. teeth for "punitive leverage" to levy heavy financial and other Under the WTO's TRIPS rules, all member states must pass penalties on rule violators. Under them, agriculture is a priority patent-protecting intellectual property laws that make knowledge because American companies are dominant. Cargill wrote the property. That, in turn, "open[s] the floodgates" nearly rules that Engdahl calls the "Cargill Plan". They: everywhere for the proliferation of GMO seeds and foods, even ¢ ban all government farm programs and price supports in violation of national food safety laws. worldwide (but wink and nod at massive US subsidies); GMO giants have powerful friends in government backing * prohibit countries from imposing import controls to defend their agenda. George W. Bush is one of them, and in 2003, after their own agricultural production; the invasion of Iraq, he made the proliferation of GMO seeds his ¢ ban agricultural export controls, even in top priority. With that support, GMO times of famine, so that Cargill can companies have been pushing things to the dominate the world export grain trade; and limit. * forbid countries from restricting trade Engdahl gives a brazen example involving through food safety laws called "trade the Texas biotech company, RiceTec. It barriers"; this demand also opens world That provision is schemed to patent basmati rice, the dietary markets to unrestricted imports of GMO . . staple across Asia for thousands of years. foods, with no need for their safety to be written into WTO rules With IRRI collusion, the company stole the proved. H H seeds and patented them under Rockefeller The International Food & Agricultural under its Sanitary and Foundation-crafted rules. The 2001 US Trade Policy Council (IPC) lobby worked Phytosanitary (SPS) Supreme Court decision in Ag Supply v. ith Cargill and US agribusiness to advance Pi Hi-Bred made this possible; it this agenda. The