Government procurement, i.e. government buying of goods and services from private sources, will fall under the FTAA stranglehold as well. The FTAA will include measures that require governments to reveal the sources from whom they buy goods and services to corporations. Should their buying procedures prove to be preferential, governments will have to succumb to corporate interests and eliminate them. This means that governments will no longer be able to support local producers, which will be devastating to local populations, and especially small farmers who rely on government assistance.

The FTAA initiative will be broader in scope than the WTO's procurement policy, which does not include national treatment or tariff elimination rules. This will be just another way for the FTAA to discard local interests in favor of corporate profit-making.

Market Access

Mega-corporations want to create a homogeneous global market (full of homogeneous minds) where everyone on Earth (we're talking billions of people here . . .) will drink Coke, wear Gap and listen to Britney Spears (A side note: all "mainstream" products are packaged together in order to maximize profit). To do this, they must first eliminate all so-called "barriers to trade." These include trade tariffs (taxes on imported foreign goods) and "non-trade barriers". A "non-trade barrier" is any government policy or standard that interferes with trade.

To put this in perspective, let's say there's a birth control company who wants to set up shop in a country where birth control is outlawed for religious reasons. According to the FTAA, that country's unique cultural heritage and religious beliefs represent a "barrier to trade" and would therefore be eliminated.

The FTAA's mandate on market access will be identical to the WTO's Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) agreement. The TBT forces governments to prove, if challenged, that their procedures are not restrictive to trade. This is yet another example of the FTAA negotiators choosing the harshest free trade policy available, as NAFTA's market barrier rules are far less severe than the WTO's. The WTO enforces tighter restrictions on government policies, especially those dealing with civil matters like public health and environmental protection, which pose a critical threat to corporate profit making.

By eliminating tariffs and all other market barriers, the FTAA will exacerbate the worldwide destruction of tropical rainforests (which we know very little about) and will further decimate biodiversity (which may be essential to maintaining steady levels of energy distribution within the planetary system). With the removal of tariffs, costs of production (i.e. logging) will decrease considerably, and corporations will be motivated to increase their rate of unsustainable logging throughout the hemisphere. We'll watch the outcome of billions of years of natural evolution felled in a matter of decades, all in the name of corporate profit and free trade.

Agriculture

The FTAA will force governments to change their policies relating to the support of local farmers, the maintenance of emergency food stocks, setting food safety rules, and ensuring a steady food supply. Rather than adjusting these rules for the benefit of citizens throughout the hemisphere, however, the FTAA will lower standards for food safety and bankrupt small farmers, who struggle to get by as it is. In keeping with the pattern you may have already noticed, the FTAA rules are designed to protect and expand the profits of large corporations, while forcing poor, independent producers to take a hike.

Food safety regulations can be costly, and in poor countries looking to get a leg up in the global market, food standards will likely be overlooked. This means unclean, unsafe foods will be circulated throughout the hemisphere, should the FTAA's deregulating policies be set in place.

Under NAFTA, the U.S. began importing large amounts of fruits and vegetables from Mexico, while at the same time the Mexican government was cutting its food inspection budget. Not surprisingly, in 1998, this led to a Shigellosis outbreak in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area because of unsanitary parsley imported from Mexico. Over 150 people fell ill, and the contaminated parsley has since been connected to similar outbreaks in three other American states and two Canadian provinces.

The FTAA will enforce no unilateral standard on food safety, and in light of the recent Mad Cow and foot-and-mouth epidemics, this could spell disaster for the entire hemisphere (especially if Tyson is looking to make a move in the industry!) Since NAFTA, meat and poultry products that fail to meet U.S. safety regulations have been imported to the U.S. and consumed by Americans just the same. Also, illegal pesticides and other toxic agricultural chemicals are often sold to desperate third world nations in Latin America, and under the FTAA, foods contaminated by such chemicals will be sold back to the U.S.

Another major issue surrounding the FTAA's agricultural policy will be the GMO (genetically-manipulated organism) monopoly, which the WTO has been ramming down everyone's throat for seven years now. Companies like Monsanto (or if you want to be official and call them trade negotiators, go ahead . . . be polite) want to force every nation in the Western Hemisphere to allow their patented seeds to monopolize the agricultural market.

The monsters of Monsanto (and their "clones") place patents on seeds that farmers would normally save and selectively breed over the years. But patenting laws force farmers to buy GM seeds, which are untested and could pose hazards to the environment.

For the few farmers who can hold their own against unfair competition from agribusiness giants, there will be little chance of staying afloat, as most will be driven to poverty by high production costs (buying patented seeds and sophisticated machinery to keep up). The FTAA mandate on agriculture and government procurement also disallows governments from subsidizing and favoring local farmers, so once again the little guys get shafted.