Harry Pollard wrote on Wed, 28 Nov 2001: > The protection of "human rights, labour or the environment" is a joke. If > it were not, the various international bodies involved in these things > could disband and go home. What happens when the WTO threatens the fat > cats' tariff protected monopolies, is they scream "environment!" "labor!" > "rights!"or anything else that will divert attention from their real > purpose - to maintain their privileges at the expense of the people.
The claim that tariffs and subsidies protect "fatcats" is a half-truth -- it's true in some cases/places but not in others. In America, farming subsidies are mostly for "fatcats", whereas in Switzerland, most farming subsidies actually go to environmentally and socially useful purposes: We have the highest percentage of organic farming and the strictest animal welfare regulations in Europe. Farming also has other functions such as landscape maintenance, biodiversity protection, consumer-protection (e.g. against antibiotics-resistance) and even jobs in rural areas. These important functions cost money that has to provided by subsidies. So the problem is not subsidies per se, as Harry claims, but the right distribution of subsidies: for environmental & social purposes instead of "fatcats" (factory farms which pollute and destroy jobs &animal welfare). Chris > "America has the best politicians that money can buy."
