How UK trade policies could help heal global healthcare inequalities | Ruth Bergan and Natalie Sharples

Theresa May’s recent visit to India, during which discussions about cooperation over trade in health services were a priority, is a reminder that trade and investment cannot be isolated from other areas of policy.

Key among these is universal health coverage – the provision of quality medical services to all people when they need them, without causing financial hardship. This is a concept that is having its moment: it is championed by everyone from health activists to the World Bank, and is one of the targets in the sustainable development goals.

What is obvious, but perhaps less palatable to some of its advocates, is that achieving universal health coverage requires addressing polices far beyond the health sector. Policies that need to work for universal health coverage include those on water and sanitation, nutrition and education, but also global policies and practices that impede the right to health.

In the context of Brexit, UK trade is one such policy we urgently need to examine. Trade has huge implications for health. This was seen very clearly in the EU’s failed attempt to agree a trade deal with India. When the EU proposed to include stricter patenting rights for companies in the deal, Indian negotiators, the UN and activists all raised serious objections, fearing it would drive a huge increase in the cost of medicines relied on by poor communities across the globe.

Fears about trade rules are well-founded. One third of the world’s population lacks access to essential medicines. New treatments for people living with HIV in middle-income countries can cost between $ 3,000 (£2,400) and $ 28,000 per person each year. No surprise that for many people this is out of reach. Inequalities in power between companies and citizens is at the heart of this. Patent protection given to pharmaceutical companies through provisions in trade agreements restricts access to cheaper, generic medicines and pushes up drug prices. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration reports that the cost of a generic drug is 80% to 85% lower than the brand name product.

Similar power distortions are unmistakable in bilateral investment treaties. Like the controversial TTIP and Ceta agreements, these trade deals include a parallel judicial system allowing companies to sue governments at private international tribunals, curbing the ability of states to provide for the right to health for their people, and undermining democracy.

Companies are already using such provisions to challenge government health policy. In 2012, pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly began legal proceedings against the Canadian government for $ 500m for invalidating two of its patents. The invalidations were the result of a new national law that required the “utility” of an invention to be demonstrated when the patent was filed – in other words the drug did not do what the inventor said, or implied, it would do when the patent application was made, as was the case with the two contested drugs from Eli Lilly. The company then sued Canada under the Nafta treaty for lost profit and unfair treatment – a lawsuit that is not only intended to challenge the withdrawal of the patents but also Canada’s national law.

While there are no public cases of health companies suing India, UK companies have certainly been using the provisions of UK bilateral investment treaties to challenge other aspects of Indian government policy. Vedanta Mining and Vodafone have both challenged changes to Indian tax law. The companies had used offshore vehicles to buy out Indian companies, neatly avoiding having to pay significant amounts of tax. When India attempted to close the loophole (pdf) that allowed this to happen, the companies used the UK-India treaty to sue the government for “compensation”.

Every day 16,000 children under-five (5.9 million a year) die. The causes of their deaths are largely preventable, meaning these children are not killed by illness, but bad policies. As the Alma Ata – the first international declaration underlining the importance of primary health care – made clear almost 40 years ago, health inequalities within and between countries are “politically, socially and economically unacceptable”. Achieving universal health coverage requires training more health workers, improving health information systems and mobilising more domestic financing. It also requires addressing the global causes of poverty and inequality. Trade and investment policies should be first on the list. India has already revised its bilateral investment treaties to limit the range of policies that can be challenged. The UK now has an opportunity to make sure its own trade policy supports the health of people across the world. We must demand that MPs act now to ensure it.

• Natalie Sharples is senior policy advisor at Health Poverty Action

How UK trade policies could help heal global healthcare inequalities | Ruth Bergan and Natalie Sharples

European official commits to safeguarding NHS in EU-US trade deal

A new EU-US trade deal could include an additional £4bn a year into the Uk economic system, but it has prompted fears NHS providers will be threatened by privatisation. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Campaigners for a new EU-US trade deal, which could include an extra £4bn a year to the Uk economic system, have been given a increase right after an undertaking from Europe’s lead negotiator that US healthcare firms will not be allowed to run NHS services.

Amid trade union fears that the proposed deal could act as a cover to privatise the NHS, the primary European commission negotiator has mentioned that the NHS would be “fully safeguarded”.

Ignacio Garcia Bercero, director of the USA and Canada division in the European commission, produced the commitment in a letter to the former Labour shadow health secretary John Healey who is chairman of the all-party group on the trade deal. It is recognized as TTIP – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.

Bercero informed Healey: “Though wellness companies are in principle inside of the scope of these agreements and ongoing negotiations, we are assured that the rights of EU member states to handle their health methods in accordance to their various requirements can be fully safeguarded.”

The intervention by the European commission was welcomed by Healey who is facing a battle in the Labour movement towards the EU-US trade deal. The Unite union published investigation at its latest conference which warned that the proposed partnership locations the NHS at “unique risk” in the face of a “Tory drive in the direction of privatisation”. There are moves to table a vote at the TUC congress in September and there is strain for an emergency movement to be tabled at Labour’s annual conference.

Healey explained the commission letter need to reply fears in the Labour motion about the threat to the NHS. Healey told the Guardian: “This letter confirms that the NHS can be totally exempted in any TTIP deal. Now it is for United kingdom ministers and EU negotiators to make positive that the commitments the lead negotiator is producing are put in area in full. This letter confirms that the biggest risk to the NHS is the Tories not TTIP.”

The former minister spoke out after the European commission moved to allay fears about the effect of the trade deal on the NHS. Bercero wrote that:

• Bilateral agreements produced by the EU exclude or incorporate particular reservations “for publicly funded health providers”. He wrote: “This policy space means that member states do not require to supply accessibility to their markets for foreign organizations and even if they do give accessibility they can discriminate in between foreign organizations and EU / domestic ones.”

• EU member states are entitled to preserve and adopt new measures to handle accessibility to their well being service industry by foreign suppliers. “The EU does not intend to change its technique to health services in trade negotiations for TTIP.”

• EU members states face no restrictions on “liberalising the health sector nor from deliberalising it”. He wrote: “The EU does not intend to modify its method to public procurement for wellness companies in TTIP.”

Bercero also answered critics who warn that the controversial Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) – the dispute mechanism attacked by critics as secretive – could pose a chance to the “existing mix of public and personal well being support delivery”. He mentioned that adjustments to the NHS above the previous two decades have not been affected by EU trade policy.

In an obvious attempt to allay issues in the Labour get together, which programs to repeal Andrew Lansley’s overall health and social care act, the commission official wrote: “If a future Uk government, or a public entire body to which energy has been devolved, had been to reverse choices taken underneath a preceding government, for example by discontinuing companies supplied by a foreign operator, it would be entirely at liberty to do so. However, it would have to respect applicable United kingdom law.”

Bercero concluded: “We can previously state with self-assurance that any ISDS provisions in TTIP could have no influence on the UK’s sovereign proper to make modifications to the NHS. I hope that this details obviously demonstrates that there is no purpose for worry both for the NHS as it stands right now, or for modifications to the NHS in potential, as a outcome of TTIP.”

The Huffington Submit reported Len McCluskey, the Unite general secretary, as telling his conference: “David Cameron … have to use his powers to defend our cherished NHS. US health businesses will even have the right to sue a long term United kingdom government in secret courts if politicians try out to reverse privatisation.

“The most considerable effect will be felt in wellness, enabling US healthcare multinationals and Wall Street traders to sue the Uk government in secret courts if it attempts to reverse privatisation. David Cameron can exempt the NHS from these trade negotiations. Except if the prime minister acts, bureaucrats in Brussels and Washington will make the sell-off of our NHS irreversible.”

Healey mentioned of the transatlantic deal: “Even on the most measured assessment it could be really worth an further £4bn a yr to Britain’s GDP.”

European official commits to safeguarding NHS in EU-US trade deal

Australian wellness amenities at risk from international trade deal, says union

The trade union representing Australia’s nurses and midwives is warning that a worldwide trade deal in solutions might herald a new wave of privatisations in the country’s public hospitals and health services.

The New South Wales Nurses and Midwives’ Association has written to the federal trade minister, Andrew Robb, requesting that details of the Trade in Providers Agreement (Tisa) be made public to handle issues from a variety of groups that the proposed pact will have a profound impact on the provision of public providers.

Negotiations on the Tisa resume in Geneva on Monday and Australia is chairing the talks from then until Friday.

The 23 parties to the agreement are Australia, Canada, Chile, Chinese Taipei, Colombia, Costa Rica, the European Union (representing its 28 member states), Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Republic of Korea, Switzerland, Turkey and the United States.

Talks on the agreement began last year, and Australia is moving the deal forward with the US and the EU. The pact is getting pursued outside the World Trade Organisation by a group of pro-trade liberalisation nations with the notion that the final text be compatible with the Standard Agreement on Trade in Providers (Gat).

Australia has a significant economic curiosity in liberalising the international trade in solutions. The solutions sector comprises about 70% of domestic economic activity and 17% of exports, in accordance to evaluation by the Division of Foreign Affairs and Tade.

But unions representing public sector employees internationally are getting ready to campaign towards the agreement.

Public Providers International, the global physique for public sector unions, has commissioned a report that attacks the foundations of the proposed pact. That report, released at the Australian embassy in Geneva on Monday, contends that the Tisa is “among the alarming new wave of trade and investment agreements founded on legally binding powers that institutionalise the rights of traders and prohibit government actions in a broad selection of regions only incidentally related to trade”.

It claims the agreement will avert governments from returning public services to public hands when privatisations fail, will restrict domestic rules on employee security, will restrict environmental laws and will impact client protections and regulatory authority in places such as licensing of healthcare services, electrical power plants, waste disposal and university and school accreditation.

The PSI has known as on the negotiating parties to release the provisional text, exclude all public services from the agreement and guarantee that all nations have the correct to regulate in the public curiosity.

The New South Wales nurses have also written to Robb seeking clarification about Australia’s stance in the discussions. The union’s general secretary, Brett Holmes, claims the Tisa “would make it less difficult for multinational firms to revenue with impunity”.

“If profitable it could open up a wide selection of crucial public solutions, such as wellness care, to be offered off permanently for personal revenue and never permitted to be returned to public hands,” Holmes mentioned. “Every new wellness-care support would also have to be privatised beneath this agreement.”

The feedback echo arguments the ACTU has put to the government as part of the public submissions procedure into the proposed agreement.

But the Tisa also has powerful supporters in the organization community, each in Australia and internationally. The Australian Companies Roundtable has utilized its submission to the foreign affairs department to get in touch with for a pact with a “high degree of ambition”.

“Now that the Tisa negotiations have begun, it is crucially important to sustain momentum and retain a substantial degree of ambition,” the group says.

“We think that an ambitious agreement must cover 21st century troubles, like cross-border data flows, regulatory transparency and co-operation, movement of organization individuals and principles for state-owned and state-sponsored enterprises that compete in business markets and the digital economic system.”

One more supporter is the ANZ Financial institution. Its submission says the bank “strongly supports the Tisa negotiations and believes they signify a considerable opportunity not only for lowering barriers to trade for recent parties to the negotiations, but can also set important targets for additional liberalisation in the long term by nations at the moment not a get together to the negotiation”.

Australian wellness amenities at risk from international trade deal, says union

Papayas amongst best offenders in GMO trade detections

International trade incidents of GM crops mixed with supposedly non-GM shipments have spiked in recent years, according to data collected from the United Nations’ (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) from 75 of its member countries.

Of 198 cases reported between 2002 and 2012, 138 occurred in the three-year period leading up to 2012. Although most instances involved commodity crops – most notably linseed, rice and maize – papayas also ranked among products with the most GM detections.

The overall, top offending exporters for low levels of GM crops mixed with non-GM foods were the U.S. and China – both with over 50 instances each – and Canada, with more than 40 instances. The meaning of “low level” is not, however, specified in the study and interpretation may vary country by country.

Offending papaya suppliers included Thailand, shipping to France, and Taiwan, shipping to Japan. Germany also reported 16 cases of GM papayas mixed in non-GM shipments but did not specify the place of origin.

The reported case in Japan came in 2011, resulting in a recall of unplanted seeds from distributors and destruction of all plants germinated from the seeds in question. In the French detection, in 2012, the product underwent market withdrawal and consumer recall.

Germany also enacted recall, withdrawal and destruction of the papayas in question.

FAO senior food safety officer Renata Clark pointed out that although such instances are just a drop in the bucket compared to the millions of tons of food traded every year, such detections do create a damaging economic impact.

In the case of 26 countries, GM detection resulted in a blockage of imports, including U.S. rice in the Netherlands and U.S. maize in France.

“Because trade disruptions may be very costly and given the reported increase in the occurrence of these disruptions, FAO conducted this survey and is holding a technical consultation to try to start a dialogue between countries on the issue,” she said, referring to a planned FAO meeting on the findings in Rome on March 20 and 21.

“We were surprised to see incidents from every region. … It seems the more testing and more monitoring they do, the more incidents they find.”

Despite the increase in GM detections, Clark noted that 37 of the 75 reporting countries indicated they had little to no capacity to detect such products due to lack of laboratories, technicians and equipment.

Many countries requested support from FAO to improve their detection capacity and analysis of the overall safety of GM foods.

Of surveyed countries, 77% reported to have some sort of food safety, feed safety or environmental regulations on GM crops. 15% planned to have a policy in the future, and 7% had none and reported no plans of establishing any.

72% reported a “zero-tolerance” policy for unauthorized GM crops, while 20% did not.

In regards to food safety assessments for GM products, 24% said no such guidelines exist in their country. An additional 12% followed international guidelines and 7% followed domestic guidelines.

In terms of testing on imports, 29% required no test for low level or adventitious presence (LLP/AP) of GMOs in agricultural products. 34% required testing by the exporting country and 12% required testing domestically. 54% had established no threshold for LLP/AP.

Jordan Markuson is the Founder of Aqua Health Labs. He has been a nutritionist, writer and entrepreneur for over 10 years. He is an activist supporting consumption of raw, renewable, and organic foods. Jordan believes that based on all available scientific evidence, once food is processed it loses the majority of the important nutrients. He is very interested in plant-based phytoplankton as a fish oil alternative because of the pure omega-3 EPA essential fatty acid it produces.

http://www.freshfruitportal.com

Papayas amongst best offenders in GMO trade detections