WASHINGTON (FNS) -- A coalition of consumer groups alleged that a new trade agreement signed April 15 by most of the world's nations could compromise America's food safety and force supermarket operators to meet regulations set by bureaucrats in Geneva.
"The GATT Uruguay Round will imperil food safety in this country because it will allow them to be challenged . . . as illegal trade barriers before secret tribunals in Geneva," Ralph Nader charged at a press conference held three days before 121 nations were set to sign the landmark trade accord in Morocco.
Nader, the founder of Public Citizen, a coalition of consumer organizations, warned that the Round's decision to adopt a world food regimen, known as Codex Alimentarius, as the basis for regulating health and safety issues in the world food trade, would have dire consequences for U.S. consumers.
"Nothing is more likely to pull down our present U.S. consumer and environmental protections and derail future advances than the trade deal," Nader said.
Specifically, he said that foreign nations, or U.S. chemical and agricultural firms, could challenge American food safety laws as being "unreasonably strict" and hence an illegal trade barrier. Nader said challenges likely would be filed to overturn U.S. meat and poultry inspection laws, nutritional labeling rules, laws limiting the use of ionizing radiation as a food preservative and virtually all pesticide residue laws. For example, Richard Wiles, an official with Public Citizen's environment group, said the Codex today permits the use of 40 pesticides for which the U.S. permits no residues on perishables. Wiles said of these 40 chemicals, the Environmental Protection Agency classifies six as carcinogens. Nader and Wiles said they are particularly concerned that the Codex uses a risk-benefit analysis to determine what chemicals can be used or residues permitted and at what levels. In several cases they said Codex permits using carcinogenic chemicals in food that are either banned by the U.S., or are at levels many times higher than permitted here. Patti Goldman, a Public Citizen attorney, said that municipal or state food safety laws that are more restrictive than in the Codex, also could be challenged in Geneva.
Consequently, Goldman said, "faceless bureaucrats" with the Geneva-based GATT Dispute Resolution Tribunal effectively would dictate how U.S. food retailers must maintain, handle and display perishables. Goldman noted that in 1990, a GATT dispute board declared as an unfair trade barrier the U.S. ban on the importation of tuna caught with long dragnets. The U.S. maintained this ban was necessary to halt the rapid disappearance of dolphins, which inevitably get trapped in such nets. In his press conference, Nader called upon the Clinton Administration to declare a moratorium on the enforcement of world trading rules as they respect the U.S. "for the health and safety of the American people, if not the political health of the Clinton Administration." The U.S. and 120 other nations on April 15 signed documents formally adopting the Uruguay Round, named after the country where these world trade talks began in 1986. Congress must adopt implementing legislation before the Round's provisions can take effect. This is set for Jan. 1, 1995, when a new World Trade Organization will be created to govern world trade, succeeding the GATT.
In response to Nader's group's charges, John R. Cady, the National Food Processors Association's president, said, "GATT requires that any food safety regulations be arrived at through an open process based on sound science." Cady added, "There is no need for concern over the possibility of U.S. food standards being lowered as a result of illegal trade barriers raised by other nations." The Food Marketing Institute here declined to comment on the consumer group's charges, directing a reporter to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative for further information.
A spokeswoman for U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor said the new trade pact "will not abridge our sovereign right to insure food safety." She declined to comment on the GATT decision that held the U.S. tuna catch law illegal.
