Trump to Force Toxic GMOs on other Countries

Barbara H. Peterson

Farm Wars

If there were any doubts about President Trump being in bed with the biotechnology industry spearheaded by Monsanto, those doubts can be firmly put to rest.

The Trump administration will attack overseas regulations that restrict the export of GMO crops and other products resulting from American technological innovation, said U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer at the first meeting of a newly created interdepartmental task force on rural America (link insertion by author). “We are going to bring cases at the WTO and other venues, we’re going to insist that any barrier be science-based, and the United States will increase exports,” he said. (Agriculture.com)

"Science-based" is pro-industry jargon created by the biotech pushers. What this term has come to mean is anything but "science-based." It represents propaganda put forth to fool the public into believing that false claims of safety disguised as scientific fact invented by the biotech industry to promote sales of genetically engineered organisms (GMOs) and their associated pesticides/herbicides is legitimate science. It is not.

President Trump’s executive order creating the task force directed it to look for legislative, regulatory, and policy changes that promote agriculture, including those that “advance the adoption of innovations and technology for agricultural production and long-term, sustainable rural development.” The order identified 13 areas for examination. First on the list is removing “barriers to economic prosperity and quality of life in rural America.” Second is the advancement of agricultural technology.

Lighthizer said one of the top priorities for his office is the removal of trade barriers that cannot be defended scientifically. Exports generate 20¢ of each dollar of U.S. farm income. If other countries unfairly block U.S. exports because of the technology behind them, he said, “there is a reluctance to incorporate that technology into our own production at home.”

U.S. officials routinely urge other nations to approve commercial sales of biotech crops. In the past couple of years, China has been accused of dragging its feet on the approval of new U.S. GE strains. Corn prices in this country fell when China rejected more than 1 million tonnes of U.S. corn earlier this decade because the cargoes included an unapproved GMO variety from Syngenta. In a class-action lawsuit currently under way in Kansas City, farmers have blamed Syngenta for selling the seed, approved by U.S. regulators, before it was cleared by China for import. (Agriculture.com)

In other words, if other countries reject our GMO exports, that hurts American business, and we can't have that. It doesn't matter if what we export is poisoning children and adults as well, buy it or face a fight. And all this is promoted as a means to help rural America.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, who chairs the task force, said rural America lags urban areas in recovering from the 2008–2009 recession. One in four rural children lives in poverty, the highest rate in three decades, he said. “The president understands that prosperity and recovery have not been uniform. … We’ve got technology issues, we’ve got infrastructure issues, we’ve got health issues.”

One in seven Americans lives in rural areas. “We understand that rural development is not urbanization,” said White House agriculture adviser Ray Starling. The task force, he said, will focus on “taking what we have in rural areas and making it more prosperous.” (Agriculture.com)

Prosperity built on the backs of forcing America and the rest of the world to accept Monsanto's and the rest of the GMO industry's poison. Yeah, that's how to make America great.

 

©2017 Barbara H. Peterson