New Report Reveals How Pending Trade Agreements Will Worsen Imported Food Safety Problem by Increasing Food Imports While Replicating Limits on U.S. Food Safety Policy From Past Trade Deals

U.S. Food Imports Double Since NAFTA and WTO, Which Set Limits on Border Inspection, Safety Requirements; Analysis of New Data Details Safety Problems With Latin American NAFTA Expansion Targets That Are Major U.S. Seafood Importers

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Remedying serious problems with imported food safety will require significant reforms to trade policy as well as improvements in domestic laws, according to a report released today by Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch division.

The report, Trade Deficit in Food Safety; Proposed NAFTA Expansions Replicate Limits on U.S. Food Safety Policy That Are Contributing to Unsafe Food Imports,   documents the connection between trade agreements that limit domestic food safety policies to facilitate trade and the growing safety threat posed by food imports, which have doubled since implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements. Available projections for the proposed Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with Peru, Panama, South Korea and Colombia show an increase in food imports, while the deals would also replicate past trade pact limits on safety standards the United States can require for imported food and how much inspection is permitted.

“We face a perverse situation in which Congress is rushing to address serious safety problems with the growing amount of imported food Americans consume while four more NAFTA-style trade deals are pending that will undermine Congress’ ability to ensure our safety,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch division. “This is a trade problem that is not just about China, but rather goes to a trade model that prioritizes increasing the volume of traded food over safety.”

“NAFTA failed, CAFTA failed, and Peru and Panama – as written – are just more of the same," said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). "With a string of contaminated products from China flooding our markets, ensuring food and product safety standards in trade agreements is not an option; it is an imperative. This report underscores the importance of a new direction for trade policy."

A steadily increasing amount of food on U.S. dinner plates is imported. Nearly $65 billion in food is imported annually – almost double the value imported when NAFTA and the WTO went into effect. More than 80 percent of the seafood Americans eat is imported.   In the NAFTA-WTO era, seafood imports have increased 65 percent. Between 1995 and 2005, shrimp imports alone jumped 95 percent.   In 2005, the United States, formerly known as the world’s bread basket, became a net food importer for the first time, with a food deficit of nearly $370 million.

“The way these trade agreements are written, U.S. farmers and ranchers will be locked into a competitive disadvantage. As a result, we will continue to see an erosion of our rural communities that are dependent on the U.S. cattle industry because we will be systematically replacing domestic production with larger volumes of imported product,” said Bill Bullard, CEO of the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA),  a national independent cattle producers’ association.