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As Elizabeth Warren said:

“I have heard the argument that transparency would undermine the Trade Representative’s policy to complete the trade agreement because public opposition would be significant,” Warren explained. “In other words, if people knew what was going on, they would stop it. This argument is exactly backwards. If transparency would lead to widespread public opposition to a trade agreement, then that trade agreement should not be the policy of the United States.”

watch her here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=kAgJaIwdXLI

democracynow has more info out yesterday: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS-x5SlcPPM

This is a pretty silly argument from Sen. Warren. Put aside the fact that she can't even be bothered to ascribe the argument to any named individual, nobody's arguing that the agreements themselves shouldn't be public and "transparent".

A modern trade agreement represents a balancing of a huge number of private interests. Some will benefit and some will be harmed, but the overall outcome is expected to be positive for all sides. Achieving that balance will require concessions from both sides. It is an extraordinary restraint on the capabilities of the USTR if they must worry about every concession they offer (which may never even make it into the deal) being trumpeted to the rooftops by domestic political opposition.

This is really common sense. It's the same reason the military base closure commission deliberates in private, or, for that matter, why the U.S. Supreme Court does, even with no direct electoral politics at issue.

Closed proceedings are the exception in the American system. Generally, there are two justifications, deriving from constitutional missions: security, and the inherently counter-democratic function of the judiciary. Even then, oral arguments in front of the Supreme Court are public and recorded.

The USTR cannot avail itself of such justifications.

Am I misunderstanding, or are you suggesting that it would be exceptional for the U.S. to keep diplomatic negotiations private? ISTM that it's just the opposite: International discussions are almost always held in private. Why should what the USTR does be any different from, say, negotiation with an ally over a Status of Forces agreement?

The issue with "franken-foods" is, I'm guessing, that brands will not have to label if a food has GMO in it. I thought the US already doesn't require this?

Basically, it's some sort of anti-consumer deal (presumably, because consumers have no input in it).

Improperly labelled food would impede consumer choice (and thus voting with your purse). Given how popular the organic movement is, labeling food as containing GMO would probably be a significant factor in influencing consumer purse-voting habits.

And they shouldn't be required to do so. Most foods today are GM in one way or another. It will just become a sign for consumers to stay away from those products when there's really no good reason to do so.

Maybe they disagree with GM business practices and don't want to buy them. Is such information available from the stores? On the packaging? At a kiosk somewhere? Where?

It's the flipside of the oft proposed "let them vote with their dollars" solution that's not often discussed: in order to make informed decisions people need (easy, plain language) access to honest, total information. If the problem of information is solved today in a non-utopian free-market, the move to one becomes less dangerous. If we shift to one from the information desert of today the consumer is just screwed for eternity.

That is, it's one problem of many with that solution; the hardest, as I see it, is proving that such a thing as a rational, informed consumer is not a myth.

Total information is not the same as informative labeling. Companies are not allowed to label the absence of irrelevant things for good reason--when a food is labeled as "X-free", X should in some way be something worth avoiding for some people (if you want a trans-fat-free / carb-free / gluten-free diet, etc.) This is what consumers expect when they see a label advertising the absence of something--that it is worth avoiding.

If you are allowed to put completely irrelevant or misleading labels, companies could "distinguish" their brands with other nonsense:

"Biotin free!" "No added Niacin!" "No synthetic Pyridoxine!"

Does any consumer realize that these are in fact not things you should be avoiding? Of course not, and they shouldn't have to. So if you start letting companies label food as GMO free, most people will be misled because they expect the labeling to be because of a scientific reason the food is worth avoiding--when there is of course absolutely no scientific basis to fear GMO foods.

It was more a meta comment about (the myth of) informed consumers than it was an attack/call to action on GMO foods or food labeling ((spoiler alert: I like GMO foods)).

In fact, I explicitly made mention of an alternate reason for wanting to avoid GM foods is because I find their business(IP) practices vile. That's one of the textbook examples of "voting with your dollar" - don't like the way a company does business? Don't buy them.

If people want to know how their food was produced and who was involved I think they should have the ability to get that information, certainly much easier than they can today, so that they can exercise choice.

It doesn't mean that they have to follow "x-free" labeling to get it. A footnote or adjoining placard of "this fruit produced with seeds licensed from Monsanto" would do just fine.

I don't think that preconceived ignorance of the public's grasp of the finer points should be allowed to overrule informed people's legitimate concern with e.g. Monsanto having a monopoly on the dna and distribution of the seeds used to grow food. Information wants to be free, or something.

I think it's scientific to observe a single point of failure in a distribution network that everyone depends on due to a monopoly and try to mitigate it.

In lieu of warnings that you think are unfair, I think with the advent of smartphones and ubiquitous internet - it should not be too hard to have a barcode like scanner to show the origins of all the ingredients for mass produced food.

> Companies are not allowed to label the absence of irrelevant things for good reason

Well, they are allowed to here in Australia. For example, we have milk marketed as "permeate-free" despite permeate being a natural milk product.

That seems highly relevant omission to label, then

Bullshit. GMO provides power to both governments and corporations by allowing for the alteration of organic life. Why the hell do you want this? We do not have direct democracy.

There is a "scientific" cause to fear GMO's. Consider contamination of GMO species. Or the fact that some fast-growing GMO wheat has the consequence of having little nutrients.

GM technology gives great power. With great power comes great responsibility. I want my GM food labeled so that I can avoid GM foods that come from companies who I do not believe have the responsibility to handle that power.

The Wikileaks Party does a good job of summarizing some of the agenda.

http://www.wikileaksparty.org.au/why-australians-should-be-w...

'Under the TPP, if a company believes an Australian law endangers its “expected future profits,” it can challenge the government at an investor-state tribunal. This tribunal has the power to overrule Australian laws and levy fines against the Australian state.'

If true that's nuts. Even the WTO only lets you do tit-for-tat.

Up to this time, I believe the Aust. govt has refused to endorse this clause. Now that the new Foreign Minister is involved, who knows. I'm not optimistic on this or on copyright extensions. I think we will be sold these under the banner of "being necessary to complete the TPP for the greater good".

The idea of TPP is to extend the stalled WTO process by multilateral treaty. So you can expect it to go further in many ways. We just don't know what most of them are due to the secrecy...

> reading the actual proposals it is much less sinister.

The whole point is that there's no public discosure of the proposals and only some leaked documents from a year before. If you have more information, please share.

Keeping a sceptical view and expect the worst case scenario out of these talks is the healthiest stance I think. We can always dismiss these when reasonable and scientifically backed arguments point at the contrary.

"GM foods are and will continue to be a great leap forward in sustainable, scalable agriculture."

I see a lot of data that contradicts that statement, time and again. Is that a general feeling you have on the subject and/or does that get backed up by published numbers ?