TTIP: the countryside gone into liquidation

[Original version with English Subtitles]

The United States and Europe have been negotiating since 2013
the most ambitious commercial treaty in history.

The Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership,
also known as TTIP...

Surrounded by secrecy and developed behind citizens' backs,
the TTIP is the new Trojan horse of the neoliberal project.

...and drive growth and prosperity around the world...

Economic growth for the benefit of big business
at the expense of social and environmental rights.

Huge economic benefits are expected from reducing red tape,
avoiding divergent regulations for the future.

Behind TTIP there lies an undercover coup d'etat
by corporations of the sovereignty of the countries.

...in shaping the way we work
and the way we live our daily lives...

Although they say that free trade benefits
local communities and the farmers

because they could sell their products freely
and on an international scale, this is totally false.

Free trade basically benefits the large businesses
with headquarters in Europe and North American

to the detriment of the small farmers,
whether in the North or the South.

We want industrial activity
and we want businesses on both continents.

What we don't want is that big businesses
which have subsidiary companies everywhere

can have benefits that other industrial initiatives don't have.

The big transnational companies
are trying to impose their standards

for making more trade all over the sea.
And this is their problem.

They mean that the governments, the EU,

are going to be obliged
to change their rules in their internal market.

Of the 560 meetings organized by the Commission
before the beginning of the official negotiations,

the greatest number were for the agribusiness lobby,

which reflects how important
the approval of the treaty is for this industry.

As the European lobby recognizes, their priority regarding
the negotiations is the elimination of any legal obstacle,

harmonizing the regulations and standards
on both sides of the Atlantic.

Their North American counterparts
seem to share the same objectives,

emphasizing the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures,

as well as the hormones
and growth promoting agents or the GMOs,

which currently create obstacles
for the exportation of their products to Europe.

The negotiators have made their position
about this pressure from agribusiness clear.

A market access for industrial and agricultural products
and, of course, the rules of origen for those products.

We have the regulatory and standards group
which focuses on technical regulations,

sanitary and phytosanitary regulations,
primarily in the area of food safety...

And they say so, they call it "reducing trade barriers", "reducing regulatory barriers",

"reducing non-tariff trade barriers". These are
the things that regular people describe as

protection for our food, guarantees about clean air and water,
making sure that our products are safe.

It's true, our production costs are higher

due to very stringent animal welfare requirements,
very stringent environmental requirements...

The object of the TTIP is to lower
food standards and dietary health in the Union

because if we compare the laws,
those of the European Union are much more restrictive.

The EU biotechnology approval process is slow
and often influenced more by politics than science.

EU market should provide consumer choice
for biotech and non-biotech products.

What we are really afraid of is that our current rules
on genetically modified organisms

and the traceability of those,
the labelling of those will be really impacted.

The European Union requires all products
derived from biotechnology to be labelled,

which prevents the entry of many North American products.

In spite of ever-more permissive regulations in Europe,

the number of hectares dedicated to the cultivation
of these products is still a minority.

In the United States, however, the transgenic crops grown there
represent 40% of all those grown throughout the world.

In the majority of the countries of the EU what is of prime
importance regarding GMOs is the precautionary principle:

if we don't know what impact the consumption of a food
might have in the future, it is not to be sold.

In some leaked documents,
what we have seen is that the US

are putting into question the application
of the precautionary principle in Europe.

And it will have to be the consumers through their associations
who in the end, when the product is on the market,

show that it creates problems for health.
Of course, this means going against a multinational business,

which without doubt is
much more powerful than the ordinary citizen.

Yeah, I am for labelling, I mean,
but what I am really for is eradication.

As the TTIP could identify
the labelling of the GMOs as "trade barriers",

this would give the industry a new weapon to block the efforts
of consumers to regulate them in the United States,

as well as threatening European security policies
and opening their borders to these products.

We know that 70% of all food In the US supermarkets
contains genetically modified ingredients.

We have said in Europe: We don't want them.

And yet, under these new rules,
it will be impossible to keep them out.

Today in Europe basically what is produced on a large scale
is only one type of GMOs, the MON810 corn of Monsanto.

If we compare this with the United States, there they produce
150 or more transgenic crops, mainly corn or soy beans.

A massive permissiveness of GMOs production will lead
to environmental consequences because as has been demonstrated,

the coexistence of transgenic and conventional, and ecological farming
is totally impossible, due to the contamination.

There are experiences of communities
affected by the use of phytosanitary products

associated with the transgenic plants resistant to herbicides.
Specifically, the application of the star herbicide Roundap,

which is used in plantations of transgenic soy beans.

This could lead to severe consequences
for the environment and public health.

The standards in the European Union
that establish the maximum levels of pollution

currently block 40% of North American food products.

Hence the efforts on the part of agribusiness to eliminate
the standards and unblock the exportation of these products.

We can say that transgenics
are the maximum expression of privatization of life

and of the manipulation of life
for private and commercial objectives.

Ultimately, the pursuit of profit
by the big seed companies and the biotechnological industries

goes way beyond the question of what the transgenics are,
and leands to sequestering agriculture, seeds and common property

and relegating the farmer to the position of someone
the big agricultural companies of the sector can do without.

It can have a big impact on the rights also
of small and medium size farmers

who are having it already difficult
to compete now with big agribusiness

and that will it have even more difficult
to compete after the trade deals.

The greater concentration of production
in the hands of the corporations of agribusiness

has led to the reduction
of the number of farms in the United States.

At the present time there are only 2 million North American farms
versus 13 million in Europe

but the average size for a farm in the United States
is 13 times that of European farms.

A lot of farmers will disappear.
They will run out of their...

They will have to leave their farms because
they cannot earn a decent living anymore.

This process is already going on. It has started
since the markets have been more liberalized.

And this is also our concern.
Who will produce our food in 15 years?

The same people who at the time made money
with the real estate bubble, once the bubble burst,

looked for new sources of business
in order to speculate and make money.

And what would be better than food
since all of us have to eat every day.

We can say that we have gone
from the real estate bubble to the food bubble.

The taking over of land by investment funds
and international corporations of agribusiness

has greatly increased in the last years.

Just in 2008 gained control of 55 million hectares,
a surface the equivalent to the size of France.

Every 6 days farmland the size of London
is sold to foreign investors.

And in Europe we are witness
to the disappearance every day of more than 1000 farms.

If the farmers disappear, we will have to ask
who is going to feed us, who is going to ensure our food supply.

And the answer is clear: the big businesses
of the biotechnological industry, of agribusiness,

the supermarkets, companies such as
Monsanto, Bayern, Syngenta, Dupown, Nestle,

Procter & Gamble, Carrefour, Alcampo, El Corte Ingles, etc.
And with these companies it is clear

that basically what they are
looking for with seeds and with food

is to make money at the expense
of the rights of farmers and of consumers.

Those big farms will produce mostly not food,
but raw material for the processing industry.

Consumers can buy their food only in supermarkets.
That will be processed food, is it healthy food?

Big farms need to produce for low costs
so they use a lot of fertilizers, chemicals.

But, what is the quality of the food,
what is the effect on the environment?

If the treaty were to be signed,
it would also put an end to the small circuits

which have been created between producers and consumers,
as well as the support necessary for local food systems.

And by promoting monocultures
and intensive agricultural production methods,

it would endanger attempts
to reform European agricultural policy

on the basis of a social, economic
and environmental sustainable settlement.

A model that consumes 70% of the fresh water on the planet

and has led to the disappearance in the last century
of 75% of the varieties of agricultural products

that human beings have been growing for millennia.

A system where a third of the arable land
and 40% of cereal produced, enough for half the planet,

is used for intensive livestock production.

TTIP will undermine animal welfare standards.
It will bring on an acceleration

of the intensification of animal farming in Europe
and will lead to more animal suffering.

Using hormonal treatment to increase productivity
and washing chickens with chlorine

could be examples of prohibitions
that the European Union would have to suppress

to harmonize standards with the United States, without taking
into account the concerns of European citizens.

One of the tricks in the EU bag
has been the so called precautionary principle.

In 1997, the reason we were prohibited
from the market was because we used...

excuse me... hyperchlorinated water.

Nutritious food will only be affordable for the rich people.

So what can happen now with this treaty is
that a farmer in Slovenia (I have just spoken to him)

has to export his quality food for the rich Americans
and the poor Slovenian people

have to eat the processed food that we import from
the United States. That is a crazy system that we are creating.

We have witnessed for years the abduction
of the previous model of agriculture and food consumption

by a few companies that control
from the beginning to the end all the agri-food industry.

This has a very negative impact on the environment

as it involves food products travelling
thousands of kilometres from the field to the plate

with the consequent dependence on petroleum
and the production of gases with the greenhouse effect

and with the development of a model
of irrational and superfluous consumerism.

The chain of production, distribution and consumption
that the TTIP aims to promote even more with the transatlantic trade

is currently responsible for between 44% and 57%
of all the CO2 emissions released into the environment.

A model in which one hamburger
is made from the meat of 10,000 cows

and moves through 5 countries to get to the consumer.

A model in which food has to travel an average
of 5000 kilometres from the farm to the plate.

We need a completely different
paradigm of an ecological economy

which would relocate the processes of production
and consumption, cutting the great distances

distances that are involved
in transporting merchandise and natural resources.

The option of agroecology
would do away with the huge agribusinesses.

And relocating the economy and agriculture
would save greatly on fossil fuel but, above all,

it would create jobs in local communities
where the added value would stay

and not go to the huge
multinational companies with their production lines.

There are alternatives. Today there exist many initiatives
on a local level - cooperatives of ecological consumption,

new ways of farming, urban gardens,
ecological school cafeterias -

which support another type
of agriculture and food consumption.

This is a real challenge for the future.
Do the European citizens want to buy food from local farmers

who produce locally, who sell locally,
who take care of the environment

or do they want to buy from very big enterprises
with micro workers, monocultures and processed food?

That is what we are taking about.

Let us pursue food sovereignty, the right
of the people to decide about what is grown and what is eaten.

In short, the pursuit of democracy, land and health.

It's big business versus citizens
in both sides of the Atlantic.

The concerns are really about the rights of citizens
and the rights of the environment.

And that is why it's important
that the people from the US and from Europe

struggle together to have better standards.