American environmentalists have been campaigning against the import into the US of certain wood products on the grounds of ineffectual pest control regulations. It was reported in March 2000 that a US appeal court "has stopped an injunction on import permits for non-tropical wood products from New Zealand, Chile, and Siberia" (Press, 1/3/00). The NZ Government has strongly backed the US Administration in its contest with American environmentalists. Trade Minister, Jim Sutton, said that: "The appeal court decision reinforced NZ's view that its timber exports were never a threat to US bio-security" (ibid). Whatever the merits either way of this particular case, it certainly highlights the gathering erosion of biosecurity barriers under pressure from free trade.

In the US: "Scientists estimate that infestations of Asian gypsy moths associated with imports of Siberian logs could cost the forest and farm economy of the Pacific Northwest as much as $US58 million" (Whose Trade Organisation?", p.39). The gypsy moth pest, which is native to Europe and Asia, has been destroying millions of acres of trees in the US each year. Here in NZ, the Forest and Bird Protection Society has warned that: "An Asian gypsy moth outbreak is a time bomb waiting to go off and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) is unable to prevent it . . ." (Press, 7/1/00). About 50 infestations of the Asian gypsy moth were found in imported cars between 1997 and May 1999. Insect pest arrivals are increasing in NZ and urgent action has had to be taken against tussock moths and tiger mosquitoes. A specialist "offshore inspection and decontamination company" has warned that MAF procedures are inadequate and that any outbreak would mean immediate bans on all NZ forestry exports by the US and other countries. American environmentalists clearly have some reasons to be concerned enough to take pre-emptive action vis-a-vis NZ.

More free trade means more pests and diseases everywhere - something else that conventional economists seem unable to cope with when doing their cost-benefit analyses. They are sadly limited in so much of what they can factor in. Wallach and Sforza aptly state the central problem: "Increased commerce resulting from the lowering of tariffs, as well as WTO rules restricting quarantine and other Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) measures, pose serious new risks to biodiversity as exotic pests and other species increasingly infest non-native territories" (p.38). Various expressions of concern about NZ's border controls have been voiced in recent years - including some from government officials like Customs officers and MAF executives (e.g., Press, 12/5/98 & 11/2/00).

As the US fights its own environmentalists over wood pests and the NZ Government cops similar local criticism, another foreign trading threat has emerged under the WTO umbrella to the American biosecurity regime. Hong Kong has been complaining about the US anti-invasive species rule and the issue is the kind of inevitable WTO panel dispute which will probably have ominous implications for NZ too. The complaint had not got as far as a formal WTO hearing at the stage of Wallach and Sforza's description. In this specific case, the dispute is over the risks posed by wood boring Asian longhorned beetles which are indigenous to Japan, Korea and China. These beetles "cannot be eradicated by pesticides once they have infested a tree" (p.38). Already action has had to be taken in New York and elsewhere to get rid of a beetle infestation. But Hong Kong has "registered a complaint at a meeting of the WTO SPS Committee against the US over a 1998 rule requiring solid wood packing materials from China and Hong Kong to be heat treated, fumigated or treated with preservatives before being exported to the US" (p.38).

It is very interesting to note in this connection that NZ's Forest and Bird Protection Society has compared MAF procedures unfavourably with those enforced by the US which insists on "decontaminating New Zealand forestry and other products" before they import them (Press, 7/1/00). These superior US procedures are precisely what Hong Kong is complaining about. If Hong Kong presses its case, the US would have to demonstrate scientifically that there is a significant risk, and that its treatment procedures for dealing with this risk are absolutely necessary and the "least trade restrictive" possible. Under the WTO SPS Agreement this is a very tall order to meet. The same SPS conditions apply to questions of food safety, shifting the bias of decision making substantially in favour of TNC innovations - ranging from higher permitted levels of pesticides, through the weakening of other safety standards, to the introduction of new GMOs. Political decisions are being transformed into pseudo-technical ones, as in the beef hormone issue, and to hell with consumer rights!

The way the global market works under free trade to focus resources on luxury production for an international elite, and at the same time erode environmental and conservation standards, is shown by the expanding trade in raw salmon. Some time ago, NZ was obliged to open its borders to the import of raw Canadian salmon as a concession in the GATT/WTO process (see chapter 6 in "The Cost of Free Trade" - this book contains a detailed scrutiny of spurious governmental arguments relating to the interface of trade and environment/public health). Then, in July 1999, the Australian Government was meant to open its market to imported raw salmon after the Canadians successfully challenged an Australian import ban at the WTO (Press, 10/8/99).

But the Australian Government has dragged its feet with "Tasmanian salmon farmers saying the North American fish could bring diseases into Australia. Canada has said it will look at punishing Australian exports if its salmon exports continue to be blocked" (Press, 23/2/00). The Australian Quarantine Inspection Service had set special conditions on any imports, "stipulating that the imported fish be headed and gutted" (Press, 22/7/99).

The US was also involved in breaking down Australia's SPS barriers to the import of raw salmon. Along with Canada, it had "requested access to Australia's uncooked salmon market in 1994 ("Whose Trade Organisation?", p.62). In response, as obligated under the WTO, Australia conducted a risk assessment of the consequences of dismantling the ban it had implemented since the 1960s. Australia found that the risks would be too high and "confirmed that it was possible that Canadian uncooked salmon could infect live Australian salmon" (ibid). However, Canada responded, in turn, and "in June 1998 filed a complaint with the WTO, arguing that the salmon ban violated the SPS Agreement. The WTO panel ruled that the ban was not based on sound science, exceeded international standards and therefore was arbitrarily and unjustifiably discriminatory" (ibid). After a fruitless appeal by the Australian Government, and after the US had also come back to the attack, we have arrived at the current situation in the Australasian salmon trade.

What is so disturbing about the precedent set by the WTO finding in the Australian salmon case is the requirement of "WTO members to adopt SPS standards relating to plant and animal health only when precise risk to animals or plants can be quantified and the likelihood of infection or infestation can be established with scientific certainty" (p.63). This requirement for the quantifiable ascertainment of "precise risk" is a major element in the threatening capitalist corruption of natural science theory and application. Driven by free trade/investment, it represents a bogus applied science that draws heavily on commercialised models - from economics, insurance and so on - for decision making purposes in the vital areas of public health and environmental policy (refer to the "Cost of Free Trade" for much on this theme in regard to the NZ scene).

In their study, Wallach and Sforza point to some of the implications for the US's own border controls and for border controls in general. They refer to the threat presented by the Asian longhorned beetles and the complaint by Hong Kong as described earlier. As they remark, what the WTO is doing is putting the burden on the importing country to prove that its controls are scientifically sound with precise probability estimates of risk, and that these controls are "least trade restrictive". All this clearly demands a great deal in the way of resources and time from the country subject to complaint, let alone the problems of going through the WTO dispute process. Thus there is created a huge bias in favour of the exporting country, whatever its demands may be.

In the case of Hong Kong, the US and the Asian longhorned beetle, any formal action would mean that the jurisprudence of the Australian salmon case will apply (p.64). Overall, of course, the big winners in the trade game will be the most powerful countries like the US which can best cope with a wide range of disputes, both for and against their trading positions. More accurately, however, the big winners represent an international elite riding on the back of the TNCs and so positioned to cream the globalising process to their advantage.

The NZ salmon industry welcomed the opening of Australia's market and got access for its fish since NZ salmon "were considered disease free" (Press, 22/7/99). But at least one NZ producer believes that "cheap North American exports to Australia had the potential to further depress the market for fresh and frozen salmon" (Press, 23/2/00). Moreover, the Australian Workers' Union is worried that imports will severely hurt the salmon industry in Tasmania (Press, 26/10/99). Trade and salmonid fisheries are going to be at the topic of much continuing debate in Australasia. A 1998 move to introduce free trade in trout in NZ met enough opposition to effectively squash it, for the meantime anyway. Federated Farmers had supported trout imports as a tradeoff in NZ's case against American protectionism in the lamb trade, alleging that "that protection of the nation's wild freshwater trout fishery was based on a bogus scientific decision" (Press, 13/2/99). This allegation was strongly contested by the Federation of Freshwater Anglers and other groups. Once more, the whole episode shows how free trade can set national groupings at odds over societal and cultural values. The latest development is the Government's adoption of a private member's bill that will ban trade in trout with the bill being "criticised by National because of the implications for free trade as it would prevent commercial imports of trout flesh" (Press, 1/3/00).

Science continues to spawn incipient dangers. Genetic engineering by NZ King Salmon Co. Ltd., the country's largest producer, has bred mutant fish and aroused much public unease (Press, 26/2/00). By no means, therefore, do diseases transmitted from overseas represent the only threat to our salmonid fisheries. One potential peril that industrial agriculture and free trade have unleashed on the world is the spectre of an epidemic of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), a legacy of "Mad Cow" disease. Given its very long incubation time, CJD, which is the human counterpart of Mad Cow disease, could still yet emerge as a major health risk despite governmental and inter-governmental controls to date. Various media reports and investigative studies have continued to warn of this risk (e.g., Press, 27/12/97 & 28/3/98, 9/5/98, 12/6/98; for a review of the deplorable handling of the issue by the NZ Government see chapter 5 in "The Cost of Free Trade").

Labour Rights, Working Conditions And TNC Power

It was reported in July 1999 that the International Labour Organisation (ILO), a United Nations (UN) agency, would "investigate whether the Government's inmate employment scheme breaches a convention on forced or compulsory labour" (Press, 15/7/99). Both the Trade Union Federation (TUF) and the Council of Trade Unions (CTU) had rightly charged the then National Government with commitment to a scheme that exploits a captive work force to provide cheap labour for private enterprise. The WTO, like the old GATT, technically forbids trade in the "products of prison labour", a point emphasised in a TUF publication on the issue ("Prison Industries: Reversing on the Fast Lane: A Study of Prison Labour in Aotearoa/New Zealand" by Radha D'Souza, May 1997, pp.13,14). TUF has consistently been the leading NZ trade union body actively alert to the free trade/investment assault on worker rights.