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EU Drops Plans For Safer Pesticides After Pressure From US
An anonymous reader writes: The European Union recently published plans to ban 31 pesticides containing chemicals linked to testicular cancer and male infertility. Those potential regulations have now been dropped after a U.S. business delegation said they would adversely affect trade negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. "Just weeks before the regulations were dropped there had been a barrage of lobbying from big European firms such as Dupont, Bayer and BASF over EDCs. The chemical industry association Cefic warned that the endocrines issue 'could become an issue that impairs the forthcoming EU-US trade negotiations.'"
Well, now it looks like US corporations are flexing their muscles in Europe, reducing democracy there after all but buying legislators here in the US.
The TPP has serious technology implication in the means of enforcing IP provisions and other areas in addition to environmental issues.
This has nothing to do with TPP. TPP is the "Trans Pacific Partnership". Get out your globe and look at the big blue thing between America and Europe. That is the Atlantic Ocean, not the Pacific. This is about TTIP, not TPP.
The proposed ban was not based on sound science, just scare tactics from European greenies.
The proposed ban was largely the result of research showing that endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) have incredible costs to human health. We're not talking some vague feel-good argument about the birds and the bees -- we are talking about lost IQ points and health costs that run into the hundreds of billions:
The new series of reports by 18 of the world’s foremost experts on endocrine science pegs the health costs of exposure to them at between €157bn-€270bn (£113bn-£195bn), or at least 1.23% of the continent’s GDP.
As Ars points out, if even a fraction of the economic loss attributed to these chemicals could be reduced, the net result could easily be far more valuable than even the most wildly optimisitic projections for the value of the TTIP agreement.
Hey mate, spare a sig?
RTFA and you might then understand the issue.
What they don't clearly say is the real reason they dropped the bans is because the bans would likely not be legal if TTIP were implemented.
TTIP removes the ability of the gov't and EU to protect people and the environment in many ways. ISDS allows companies to sue governments if some new law causes them to lose profits. In effect, new laws to protect people can not be written if they impinge on some corporations TTIP given right to make profit at any expense.
TTIP is insanely bad, it is undemocratic, written by The Commission and corporations in order to help corporate profits at the expense of jobs, health, public serivces and the environment.
What is TTIP? And six reasons why the answer should scare you - Comment - Voices - The Independent
UN calls for suspension of TTIP talks over fears of human rights abuses | Global | The Guardian
New trade deal with U.S. will open the door to inferior food pumped with growth hormones and pesticides warns Jamie Oliver | Daily Mail Online
TTIP will cost one million jobs: official | War on Want
Email MEP (not mp) (sorry UK only)
This capitulation is very much proof that there will be a race to the bottom with regards to standards, there will be a corporate orgy of cost-cutting at the expense of our health and product quality. All of this cost-cutting will of course cost jobs.
Stop TTIP, sign the petition
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