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	Consumers have the right to know where their food comes from by Food & Water Watch, Public Citizen, agencies USA   May 18, 2015   In a decision food safety advocates are calling a set back for food safety standards and democracy, the World Trade Organization on Monday ruled that U.S. labels on packaged meat indicating where cows, chicken or other animals were born, raised and slaughtered are in violation of international trade pacts because they supposedly place foreign imports at an economic disadvantage.   The WTO ruling is final and not subject to further appeal. The decision was decried by critics who say it highlights the far-reaching implications of so-called "free trade" deals which allow multinational corporations and business interests to challenge domestic regulations that threaten their profits.   In the case, the WTO challenge was brought by Mexico and Canada, on behalf of their respective meat industries, against the U.S. government for violations of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) by arguing the U.S. labeling regime negatively impacted their ability to compete in the lucrative American market.   “People have the right to know where the food they feed their families comes from. It is nonsensical that a label that lets consumers know the origin of their food would be considered a trade barrier”, said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, in a statement responding to the ruling.   "This is just the latest example of how multinational companies use the global trade system to attack basic protections for U.S. consumers".. "The meat industry has been trying – and failing – for years to get rid of COOL through the U.S. system, so it had to use unaccountable, unelected trade officials at the WTO to do its dirty work."   Debbie Barker, international and trade program director at Center for Food Safety (CFS), called the ruling a "grave blow" for a consumers who have the right to know where their food comes from.   "Our food safety policies in this country should not be dictated by a closed-door trade tribunal," Barker said. "The WTO has essentially overruled our democratic law making process, which demonstrates how trade agreements can weaken U.S. food safety standards."   The Obama administration is currently pushing two new trade deals— the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with European Union nations and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP) with eleven Pacific Rim nations. And even as Obama and other proponents of TPP and TTIP have repeatedly argued these new deals won’t have the power to overturn or circumvent U.S. laws and regulations, the labeling ruling offers a precise example of how the mechanisms contained within such deals can do exactly that.   "Today’s WTO ruling, which effectively orders the U.S. government to stop providing consumers basic information about where their food comes from, offers a clear example of why so many Americans and members of Congress oppose the Fast Tracking of more so-called ''trade'' pacts that threaten commonsense consumer safeguards", said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.   The Center for Food Safety noted noted: "Promoters of Fast Track and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) have consistently said that fears over potential negative impacts to food safety and other consumer safeguards are overblown. But this WTO ruling further demonstrates that consumer group concerns that trade agreements such as the TPP are indeed legitimate. The WTO case was adjudicated via a dispute resolution system allowing member nation-states to sue one another over domestic policies that are believed to inhibit trade. Alarmingly, TPP’s investor-state provision would go even a step further by allowing corporations to directly sue countries for policies they believe impede profits.   "The president says ''we''re making stuff up,'' about trade deals undermining our consumer and environmental policies," said Wallach, "but today we have the latest WTO ruling against a popular U.S. consumer policy. Today’s WTO ruling, which effectively orders the U.S. government to stop providing consumers basic information about where their food comes from, offers a clear example of why so many Americans and members of Congress oppose the Fast Tracking of more so-called ''trade'' pacts that threaten commonsense consumer safeguards."   Wenonah Hauter, from Food & Water Watch says, "The COOL case proves that trade agreements can and do trump U.S. laws," she said. "This is a chilling reminder that our very democracy is at stake in these trade deals. Congress should reject calls to Fast Track new trade deals to maintain its legislative autonomy, rather than creating new trade tribunals that can wipe out U.S. laws."   Wallach indicated that the only up-side to the action taken by the WTO on Monday is how it bolsters the case of millions of Americans, and their allies around the world, who will continue to fight against the approval of both TPP and TTIP in the weeks and months ahead. "The corporations lobbying to Fast Track the TPP must be worried right now, as this ruling against a fundamental and popular consumer protection in the name of ''free trade'' spotlights exactly why there is unprecedented opposition to more of these deals."   * All peoples have a fundamental and universal right to know where the food they are eating comes from. The right to health includes access to health-related information. The nature of the legal obligations of State parties are set out in article 2 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). States should ensure that third parties do not limit people''s access to health-related information. - Kim Gleeson, Director, Universal Rights Network   http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/pressreleases/corporate-trade-agenda-attacks-americans-right-to-know/ http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/pressroomredirect.cfm?ID=5520 http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/press-releases/3926/wto-trade-agreement-trumps-us-food-safety-policy http://www.wbur.org/npr/405950630/sen-warren-on-the-tilted-process-of-asia-trade-bill http://www.warren.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=819 http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/may/13/the-secret-corporate-takeover-of-trade-agreements http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=15883&LangID=E http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Health/Pages/SRRightHealthIndex.aspx
	The fossil fuel industry receives $5.3 trillion a year in government subsidies reports IMF by UNFCCC, IMF, Guardian News   May 2015   Fossil fuel companies are benefitting from global subsidies of $5.3 trillion dollars a year, equivalent to $10m a minute every day, according to a startling new estimate by the International Monetary Fund.   The IMF calls the revelation “shocking” and says the figure is an “extremely robust” estimate of the true cost of fossil fuels. The $5.3tn subsidy estimated for 2015 is greater than the total health spending of all the world’s governments.   The vast sum is largely due to polluters not paying the costs imposed on governments by the burning of coal, oil and gas. These include the harm caused to local populations by air pollution as well as to people across the globe affected by the floods, droughts and storms being driven by climate change.   Nicholas Stern, an eminent climate economist at the London School of Economics, said: “This very important analysis shatters the myth that fossil fuels are cheap by showing just how huge their real costs are. There is no justification for these enormous subsidies for fossil fuels, which distort markets and damages economies, particularly in poorer countries.”   He said said that even the IMF’s vast subsidy figure was a significant underestimate: “A more complete estimate of the costs due to climate change would show the implicit subsidies for fossil fuels are much bigger even than this report suggests.”   The International Monetary Fund (IMF), said that ending subsidies for fossil fuels would cut global carbon emissions by 20%. That would be a great step towards reducing global warming, an issue on which the world has made little progress to date.   Ending the subsidies would also slash the number of premature deaths from outdoor air pollution by 50% – about 1.6 million lives a year.   Furthermore, the IMF said the resources freed by ending fossil fuel subsidies could be an economic “game-changer” for many countries, by driving economic growth and poverty reduction through greater investment in infrastructure, health and education and also by cutting taxes.   Another consequence would be that renewable energy would become even more cost competitive if fossil fuel prices reflected the full cost of their impacts.   “These fossil fuel subsidy estimates are shocking,” said Vitor Gaspar, the IMF’s head of fiscal affairs and former finance minister of Portugal. “Energy prices remain woefully below levels that reflect their true costs.”   David Coady, the IMF official in charge of the report, said: “When the [$5.3tn] number came out at first, we thought we had better double check this!” But the broad picture of huge global subsidies was “extremely robust”, he said. “It is the true cost associated with fossil fuel subsidies.”   The IMF estimate of $5.3tn in fossil fuel subsidies represents 6.5% of global GDP. Just over half the figure is the money governments are forced to spend treating the victims of air pollution and the income lost because of ill health and premature deaths. The figure is higher than a 2013 IMF estimate because new data from the World Health Organisation shows the harm caused by air pollution to be much higher than thought.   In China alone, the World Health Organization estimates there are over one million premature deaths per year due to outdoor air pollution, caused by the burning of polluting fuels, particularly coal, and other sources.   Subsidies occur in two ways, IMF Fiscal Affairs Department directors Sanjeev Gupta and Michael Keen explained:   “Pre-tax” subsidies—which occur when people and businesses pay less than it costs to supply the energy—are smaller than a few years back. But “post-tax” subsidies—which add to pre-tax subsidies an amount that reflects the environmental, health and other damage that energy use causes and the benefit from favorable Value Added Tax (VAT) or sales tax treatment—remain extremely high, and indeed are now well above our previous estimates.   The damages from energy use include "premature deaths through local air pollution, exacerbating congestion and other adverse side effects of vehicle use, and increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations," the report states.   "Energy subsidies are both large and widespread. They are pervasive across advanced and developing countries".   Coal is the dirtiest fuel in terms of both local air pollution and climate-warming carbon emissions and is therefore the greatest beneficiary of the subsidies, with just over half the total. Oil, heavily used in transport, gets about a third of the subsidy and gas the rest.   The biggest single source of air pollution is coal-fired power stations and China, with its large population and heavy reliance on coal power, provides $2.3tn of the annual subsidies. The next biggest fossil fuel subsidies are in the US ($700bn), Russia ($335bn), India ($277bn) and Japan ($157bn), with the European Union collectively allowing $330bn in subsidies to fossil fuels.   The costs resulting from the climate change driven by fossil fuel emissions account for subsidies of $1.27tn a year, about a quarter, of the IMF’s total. The IMF calculated this cost using an official US government estimate of $42 a tonne of CO2 (in 2015 dollars), a price “very likely to underestimate” the true cost, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.   The direct subsidising of fuel for consumers, by government discounts on diesel and other fuels, account for just 6% of the IMF’s total. Other local factors, such as reduced sales taxes on fossil fuels and the cost of traffic congestion and accidents, make up the rest. The IMF says traffic costs are included because increased fuel prices would be the most direct way to reduce them.   Christiana Figueres, the UN’s climate change chief charged with delivering a deal to tackle global warming at a crunch summit in December, said: “The IMF provides five trillion reasons for acting on fossil fuel subsidies. Protecting the poor and the vulnerable is crucial to the phasing down of these subsidies, but the multiple economic, social and environmental benefits are long and legion.”   Barack Obama and the G20 nations called for an end to fossil fuel subsidies in 2009, but little progress had been made until oil prices fell in 2014. In April, the president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, told the Guardian that it was crazy that governments were still driving the use of coal, oil and gas by providing subsidies. “We need to get rid of fossil fuel subsidies now,” he said.   Reform of the subsidies would increase energy costs but Kim and the IMF both noted that existing fossil fuel subsidies overwhelmingly go to the rich, with the wealthiest 20% of people getting six times as much as the poorest 20% in low and middle-income countries. Gaspar said that with oil and coal prices currently low, there was a “golden opportunity” to phase out subsidies and use the increased tax revenues to reduce poverty through investment and to provide better targeted support.   On renewable energy, Coady said: “If we get the pricing of fossil fuels right, renewable energy would all of a sudden become a much more attractive option.”   Shelagh Whitley, a subsidies expert at the Overseas Development Institute, said: “The IMF report is yet another reminder that governments around the world are propping up a century-old energy model. Compounding the issue, our research shows that many of the energy subsidies highlighted by the IMF go toward finding new reserves of oil, gas and coal, which we know must be left in the ground if we are to avoid catastrophic, irreversible climate change.”   Developing the international cooperation needed to tackle climate change has proved challenging but a key message from the IMF’s work, according to Gaspar, is that each nation will directly benefit from tackling its own fossil fuel subsidies. “The icing on the cake is that the benefits from subsidy reform – for example, from reduced pollution – would overwhelmingly accrue to local populations,” he said.   “By acting local, and in their own best interest, nations can contribute significantly to the solution of a global challenge,” said Gaspar. “The path forward is clear: act local, solve global.”   According to the report, "Eliminating post-tax subsidies in 2015 could raise government revenue by $2.9 trillion (3.6 percent of global GDP), cut global CO2 emissions by more than 20 percent, and cut pre-mature air pollution deaths by more than half.   http://www.imf.org/external/np/fad/subsidies/ http://unfccc.int/press/news_room/items/2768.php?topic=all http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/18/fossil-fuel-companies-getting-10m-a-minute-in-subsidies-says-imf http://www.thenation.com/article/207897/worlds-governments-subsidize-burning-fossil-fuels-tune-10-million-minute
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