January/February
2004
FTAA:
Trading Away Our Right to Protect Animals
By Michael Greger
|
“ As far as animals are concerned, the WTO is the
single most destructive international organization ever formed.”—Animal
Welfare Institute
“In all my years working on these issues, there has never been
a bigger threat to animal protection than that posed by GATT and the
WTO.”—Patricia Forkan, Executive Vice President of the Humane
Society of the United States
Four years ago in Seattle, among thousands of fellow protesters, hundreds
of activists donned sea turtle costumes to protest the World Trade Organization.
Two years ago, amidst clouds of tear gas, mooing mad cow-dressed activists
handed out International Fund for Animal Welfare pamphlets to the thousands
that gathered to protest the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)
talks in Quebec City. The black spots on their costumes formed the shape
of the continental Americas, which would be subsumed under the most
far-reaching trade agreement in history—the Free Trade Area of
the Americas—if the 34 heads of state who gathered in Quebec had
their way. Their next meeting was in Miami, November 2003, and the Miami
dolphins—hundreds of activists dressed as dolphins—were
there to greet them.
People who care deeply about animal issues—fur, factory farming,
animal testing, endangered species—should be very concerned with
corporate globalization. In the U.S., it all started in 1947 with GATT,
the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. As its name implies, GATT
aimed to reduce tariff rates between trading nations, but it soon turned
to non-tariff barriers, to so-called “unfair” trade barriers
like the protection of dolphins from being drowned by the far-reaching
nets of tuna fishers.
Under GATT, Mexico challenged the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act,
which allowed only dolphin-friendly tuna to enter the U.S. The Mexican
tuna industry, which continues to kill up to 50,000 dolphins a year,
demanded, in the interest of “free trade,” that their tuna
be allowed into the U.S. The GATT panel sided with Mexico and ruled
that the dolphin protection law was indeed an unfair trade barrier and
demanded that the U.S. allow the importation of Mexico’s dolphin-deadly
tuna. Under tremendous public pressure to protect dolphins, however,
the U.S. government stood its ground, which it could do without penalty
because GATT lacked any powers of enforcement. But on January 1, 1995,
the World Trade Organization (WTO) was born, which gave GATT the teeth
to rule on trade disputes. Now, all Mexico had to do was threaten to
take the U.S. before the WTO, and this U.S. law to protect dolphins—this
victory dozens of organizations fought for over decades—was effectively
overridden, setting a lethal precedent for the fate of animals.
Sea turtle protection was up next. Sea turtles are one of the world’s
oldest animals, now on the brink of extinction thanks to shrimp trawl
fishing, one of the world’s most destructive fishing practices.
To protect the world’s sea turtles, Congress amended the Endangered
Species Act to prohibit the importation of shrimp from countries that
continued needlessly killing turtles. This law was also deemed a barrier
to trade and critically weakened: four shrimp fishing nations—Thailand,
Malaysia, India and Pakistan—issued a WTO challenge.
It’s the same story with whale protection, and with attempts to
ban “walls of death”—driftnets. Europe tried to bar
pelts from North America because we still use the barbaric steel-jaw
leghold trap, but to no avail. Europe passed a law banning the importation
of cosmetics tested on animals, one of the most dramatic victories for
animals in the 1990s. It was also effectively struck down by the WTO.
Some animal protection laws haven’t even made it to the books
yet but are already being undermined by these so-called free trade agreements.
In 1999 all of Europe adopted a ban of battery cages for egg-laying
hens. But before the law goes into effect it must undergo a WTO review,
which is still pending. Europe wants to ban sow farrowing crates—horrible
veal calf-like stalls—but they can’t because of the WTO.
Groups tried to get exports from U.S. puppy mills banned, but couldn’t
because of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. The FTAA
aims to extend NAFTA throughout the Americas (barring Cuba).
There is resistance brewing. Animal rights groups not only played a
major role in the Seattle demonstrations, they were on hand at the World
Bank protests four months later in Washington, DC. The group Compassion
Over Killing used these words to describe their experience there: “The
collective efforts of activists from so many social justice movements
was nothing short of beautiful. And the support animal rights activists
received was wholly empowering. Marching from blockade to blockade,
under a huge banner reading ‘Animal Rights Activists Say NO to
Globalization,’ we were met with cheers and support. For many,
it was clear that A16 [April 16, the day of the protest] was the first
time they recognized the interconnectedness of all of our efforts to
fight for the liberation of all.”
For the animal rights movement, corporate globalization may turn out
to be the key bridging issue on which to build coalitions with other
social justice movements. Teamsters and turtles in Seattle gave way
to dolphins and dockworkers in Miami. And regardless of what happened
inside the closed meetings, that solidarity is a victory in itself.
Michael Greger, M.D. is a physician, vegan
nutrition specialist, prize-winning cook, popular speaker, and author
of Heart Failure: Diary of a Third Year Medical Student. He
is also an authority on Mad Cow disease and
serves as Farm Sanctuary’s Chief BSE Investigator. To learn more
about Dr. Greger, see www.veganmd.org.
For more on globalization and the FTAA, and how to get involved, visit
www.globalexchange.org.
 |
|
|
 |
