The Korea-U.S. FTA, Food Safety, and Food Security

Here are two papers criticizing Korea-U.S. FTA for provisions the authors think will reduce the confidence people can have in the safety of their food supplies.  Both are advocacy pieces from groups and persons opposed to the agreement, and neither provides much analysis of it.

Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch (GTW) lay's out its concerns in Trade Deficit in Food Safety: Proposed NAFTA Expansions Replicate Limits On U.S. Food Safety Policy That Are Contributing To Unsafe Food Imports (July 2007).

Most of this paper deals with the three Latin FTAs.  There is not much discussion of the Korea-U.S. agreement.  Of fifteen appearances of the word "Korea," the first 10 are brief references in the executive summary, the introduction, and a background section. 

The main discussion of the Korea-U.S. agreement is in Section C, "Global Trade Rules Place Constraints on Food Safety."  The two charges are that the Korea U.S. FTA does not undercut, but rather reinforces, the sanitary and phyto-sanitary (SPS) provisions agreed to in the Uruguay Round and supervised by the WTO, and that the investor protection measures in the agreement "newly empower food exporters from the countries to pursue challenges directly against U.S. food safety laws if they believe such laws undermine their FTA granted investor rights." 

The SPS measures protect human and animal health (the sanitary part) and plant health (the phyto-sanitary part).  GTW provides a short list of ways in which they think the Uruguay Round SPS provisions undercut the U.S. capacity to regulate for health and safety.  GTW provides more detail on one topic - "equivalency" - in this earlier paper: The WTO Comes to Dinner. U.S. Implementation of Trade Rules Bypasses Food Safety Requirements (2003).

Environmental and public health and safety advocates have been concerned for many years about the investor protection measures incorporated into FTAs.  The GWT argues that the FTA's investor protections create opportunities for foreign firms to challenge U.S. trade regulation mean to protect health and safety.  Here's the key discussion: 

The FTAs all contain extensive foreign investor rights that empower corporations operating within the FTA countries to demand compensation from the U.S. government in foreign tribunals if U.S. regulatory actions undermine their expected future profits. At first glance, this would seem to only be relevant to foreign firms operating within the United States who seek to avoid meeting domestic laws on their operations, Yet, Canadian cattlemen are currently suing the United States for approximately $235 million in compensations under NAFTA rules (replicated in all four of the proposed FTAs,) because in May 2003 the United States halted imports of beef and cattle from Canada after a case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or mad cow disease) was found in a bull in Alberta. At the time, no U.S. cattle had been found to have mad cow disease. Subsequently, a cow imported from Canada was found to have mad cow disease in Washington State. The Canadian cattlemen argue that the U.S. border closure (which was both prudent and required by U.S. law) was “trade discrimination” and a violation of their NAFTA-granted investor rights. Unfortunately, the broadness of the rules contained in the FTAs and the discretion of foreign tribunals hearing these investor-state cases have allowed this case and others which seem premised on dubious investor “rights” to proceed. Even if the United States wins this NAFTA case, it will spend millions in legal fees defending the case – funds which would be better used in enhancing imported food safety.

Alexander Moens of Simon Fraser University reviewed the history of the BSE issue in this Fraser Institute paper - Mad Cow: A Case Study in Canadian-American Relations - and concluded that the U.S. behaved in an exemplary fashion - trade wise - in this instance.  So GTW may be right, that this case is unjustified.   

Parenthetically: here's a post on NAFTA, investor protections, and the environment - Does NAFTA protect investors at the expense of the environment? Ben Muse, June 27, 2007 - the post reports on research indicating that investor protections did not hurt the enviroment.

A subsequent section raises one additional issue.  Seafood is a major source of foodborne illness and the FDA already inspects very small proportions of seafood imports.  Following the FTA, Korea may increase its oyster exports to the U.S. and oysters are associated with Vibrio, a diarrheal disdease whose incidence has been increasing.

Christine Ahn aims her column (U.S.-Korean Food Fight, Foreign Policy Institute, August 24) at "locavores."  Locavores are adherents of a movement to get a larger proportion of their diet from places near their homes.  Some set a goal of only eating food grown within 100 miles of home. 

Ahn has traises three concerns about the FTA: (1) it may lead to shrinkage of the agricultural sector in Korea, with increased unemployment, and a shift in the labor force to industrial jobs, (2) small family farmers in the U.S. may be hurt, and (3) it may reduce the "policy space" for Korean food safety regulation.

Ahn's food safety concerns are (1) concerns over Korea's ability to regulate imports of U.S. beef, and (b) concerns that the agreement would limit Korea's ability to implement the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and regulate genetically modified organism imports from the U.S.:

U.S. biotech companies, running out of places to export agricultural products containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) due to worldwide opposition, have turned to the FTA as a way to undermine the Cartagena Protocol of the Convention on Biological Diversity, a multilateral treaty that imposes labeling rules on agricultural and food exports. According to media reports, the United States and South Korea allegedly signed a Memorandum of Understanding that stipulates that when Korea ratifies the Cartagena Protocol, it will not apply the labeling rules to agricultural and food imports from the United States, which is not a party to the treaty.