30 October 2006

This new briefing looks at how governments, the agribusiness sector and transnational companies are increasingly using bilateral trade agreements to prise open markets for genetically modified crops. It documents the way in which this powerful alliance has been using these agreements, which are proliferating around the world, to confront worldwide opposition to GMOs and to weaken regulatory controls.

The main force behind this drive is the handful of giant corporations that control world trade in the world's main agricultural crops. Three companies, Cargill, Arthur Daniels Midland and Louis Dreyfus, control over four-fifths of the global grain market. Over the past few decades, they have ruthlessly pushed an agenda of market liberalisation and expansion through the multilateral trade and finance institutions. With talks stalled in these fora, they are now targeting, with determination and clout, the bilateral agreements.

READ THE FULL REPORT
Bilateral Biosafety Bullies is available in PDF and HTML format at: http://www.grain.org/briefings/?id=199

EXTRACT FROM THE REPORT: Where they have been signed, FTAs with the United States in particular work as Trojan horses not only to impose patents on life but also to override national rules on the testing, field release and labelling of GM crops and food. They can thus quickly undermine successes that people have achieved in forcing their governments to keep GM crops and foods out of their countries. With the Biosafety Protocol now pretty much rudderless in the rising tide of bilateral deal-making, it is clear that much more work has to be done to support social movements in their broad- based struggles against FTAs.