Vote Vote Vote…
for…
The Animal-Lovers’ Guide to Globalisation, Life and Everything
by Tony Wardle
When I was a kid, things were so much simpler. At election time we paraded the streets shouting: “Vote, vote, vote for Charlie Bradshaw”, or whoever it was our parents supported. Charlie would promise to introduce a free health service or nationalise the railways and if he was elected, that’s what he did.
But in the intervening years, quietly, while I was asleep it seems, things changed. No one would dare give you the opportunity to vote for anything so radical now – in fact, you’d be hard pressed to squeeze a cigarette paper between the policies of every mainstream political party in the world. Democracy has been homogenised, filleted and defused. Like a McDonalds hamburger, it has become a triumph of image over substance – a marketing concept constructed from spin, public relations hype and self interest.
The democracy currently on offer is about as democratic as flu. So when
global institutions lecture us on it, claiming it is the only path for the
future, the only acceptable system for underdeveloped countries, I get very,
very apprehensive. Who gave them the right to speak for us? Was it you?
No one pushed leaflets through my door asking for my vote and yet in happened.
The universal assumption now is that the interests of Monsanto, American Express
and Dalgety are the same as yours and mine.
Politics – and religion for that matter – have been made redundant as governments around the world now genuflect to the WB, IMF and WTO. These are the new messiahs who govern our lives. Come on, hands up, who knows what they actually do? No? Well, here’s your Rough Guide to the world’s trade, financial and political systems.
The World Bank finances development projects in poor countries – often poor because of past western trade policies. The International Monetary Fund produces stability with loans to countries experiencing financial turmoil. The World Trade Organisation polices international trade, ensuring fairness between large, powerful countries and small, impotent ones.
At least that’s what they claim. In fact, these three organisations are responsible for pillaging the world with ‘structural adjustment programmes’. In return for loans, they cut all subsidies to even the poorest people and insist that their industries and public services are handed over to the West to be run solely for profit. The outcome is wholesale environmental destruction, disempowerment, poverty and animal abuse on a monumental scale. They are opposed to everything we believe in and their aim is to reverse the victories we have achieved. Frighteningly, they also run the world so the threat is starkly real.
They have a single belief – free trade and free markets are the answer
to life, the universe and everything. Nothing else matters – the environment,
animals or human aspirations unless they make a contribution to the balance
sheet.
Here’s a little challenge – name me one person, just one, from the governing boards of any of the three organisations. Well, you can be sure you won’t find any greens, Marxists or Trotskyists among them. While the left supposedly planned world revolution by debating the finer points of dialectical materialism, the negation of the negation and who should make the sandwiches, the capitalists stepped in and achieved it.
They have no opposition and there are no widely publicised alternatives currently on offer – which makes world domination a bit of a doddle. Just this May, China was brought into the club and in the near future, the last remaining nation states will be forced to join whether they like it or not.
The three big institutions operate exactly like a gang of pickpockets. One identifies the mark, another does the dip and immediately passes the loot on to the third person – in this instance the huge, mostly US, transnational corporations (TNCs). The whole of the world’s political and economic structures are now geared to allowing these unaccountable megaliths to prosper.
If you want to know what the long-term effects are likely to be, let’s look at animals. We banned veal crates in the UK because we rightly saw them as the most barbaric example of human’s inhumanity to other creatures. Yet you can still find veal on the menu’s of restaurants all over Britain.
The disgusting practice of keeping pregnant sows tethered in dry sow stalls until they go mad has just been banned in the UK. Yet every butcher in the country still sells meat derived from these shameful systems.
Britain and Europe eventually banned the unimaginably cruel steel leg-hold trap. Yet you can still buy fur coats (if you can find somewhere that dares sell them) made from the pelts of animals who died agonisingly in them.
This year also saw the banning of cosmetic testing on animals but you can still buy major brands whose directors resolutely refuse to stop torturing animals. And despite the most extraordinary public outcry against live exports – and promises from an incoming government that they would ban the trade – cargoes of sheep, lambs and pigs are still sent on journeys lasting 50 hours or more. Even when the reason for the export is illegal, such as the ritualised slaughter of sheep at the festival of Eid el Kabir, nothing is done to prevent it. Why?
The answer is simple – restriction of trade! National policy, decided democratically by you and I at the ballot box, has been over-ruled by the World Trade Organisation. Animal welfare constitutes no part of its decision making and human health only just makes it onto the agenda. Take the US farmers’ use of hormones to promote fast growth in cattle. Responding to public pressure, the EU banned the import of this beef but the WTO ruled it was illegal and instituted a whole range of trade sanctions against Europe.
Just three lawyers, calling themselves the Dispute Settlement Panel, were responsible for this decision. Three besuited bureaucrats on salaries so fat they’re obscene, overturned the democratic decision of 255 million people. But their reason for doing it is even more worrying than the decision itself. They said that the EU hadn’t proved that hormones are dangerous! What was required was scientific certainty. At one stroke they have turned on its head the fundamental ‘precautionary principle’ which has always been used to protect human health (and even then, not very successfully) – that what we shove down our throats must first be proved safe. Not any longer! It is now up to us to prove that it’s dangerous. And of course, in all these deliberations, there wasn’t one word on the fate of the animals who are forced to grow unnaturally fast to produce more beef for a world already awash with it.
Another little gem waiting in the wings is a possible ruling that for Europe to ban the hormone BST (another US product) is also illegal. BST (bovine somatotrophin) increases a cow’s milk yield at terrible costs to the cow. It also produces increased amounts of IGF (insulin-like growth factor), known to be one of the triggers for cancer. But, Monsanto has spent billions developing this drug and wants its payback despite an ocean of unwanted milk.
An EU proposal to allow food manufacturers to label their products ‘GM Free’ is currently being objected to and the outcome might well be a ruling that this simple little label is a restriction of trade and therefore illegal. Just to complete the protection of the Monsanto’s of this world, The EU (with British backing) has agreed that GM corporations should not be held responsible if their engineered food turns out to be harmful for humans or the environment. It would saddle them with unreasonable costs and a huge amount of red tape, was the reason given.
In another ruling, the WTO determined it was illegal for a country to ban the imports of seafood solely because they were caught by methods which killed dolphins and turtles. And so these destructive methods of fishing continue and the plight of these disappearing creatures worsens.
As the World Bank and International Monetary fund open up new countries for exploitation by the TNCs, one of the first things they do is to fund livestock programmes. Invariably the cruellest, intensive methods are installed because the hardware can be supplied by the West. There is no concern for animal welfare. The consequence is cheap meat which will flood into Europe with the full weight of the WTO behind it and the cry will go up from EU producers that they can’t remain profitable. We’re already hearing the first strains of this lament. Sadly, the outcome is inevitable – there will be a reversal of those advances in animal welfare which have been won by the movement. Promised future EU reforms – an end to sow stalls, veal crates and battery cages – will be ditched.
The human and environmental costs of allowing the world to be run by this money-obsessed triumvirate are equally as high. Despite the greatest wealth the world has ever seen, one billion people live without the basic elements of human dignity – clean water, enough food, secure housing, basic education and health care. All across the globe, small farmers are being forced to end production of food for local consumption to produce crops which can be used profitably by the TNCs – usually animal fodder. In India, it has put 120 million people out of work and in some areas has led to an increase in pesticide use by 2,000 per cent.
There isn’t space here to report fully on this terrifying rape of the planet but I urge you to get a copy of this year’s BBC Radio 4’s Reith Lecture by Vandanna Shiva.
Our own Government’s attitude to what’s happening is truly enlightening. Speaking on Newsnight, the International Development Secretary, Claire Short, put everyone’s mind at rest by saying that protesters against the WTO were Luddites. She insisted that the WTO, World Bank and IMF were truly democratic, public sector institutions funded by tax payers’ money. So that’s all right, then!
Meanwhile the Tories whip themselves into a lather of jingoism by claiming that Europe is stealing our independence. In fact Europe is merely a local franchise of the global mob and it was the Tories who invited them into the boudoir and handed over the family silver.
Yes, life was once much simpler. We’d chant our little unacceptable, blood-thirsty ditty and hope for better times:
Vote, vote, vote for Charlie Bradshaw
Who’s that knocking at the door?
If it’s Fanshawe and his wife, we will slab ‘em with a knife
And they won’t come knocking any more.
What are we going to chant now? It had better be something pretty damned good!