Exposed: The Tory-Trump Plan to Kill Food Safety with Brexit Chicken

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A trans-Atlantic network of Conservative and Libertarian think tanksย were caught creating โ€˜shadow trade dealsโ€™ย which deregulate in favour of food and drug lobbies during Brexit. In this investigation for Insurge and Real Media, Kam Sandhuย exposes the long history of this trans-Atlantic network, and its efforts to drag us towards corporate freedom at the expense of public safety since the birth ofย neoliberalism.

‘Iโ€™m sure you all know the story of how you came to be hereโ€™,ย Brexiteer and Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan addressed a packed room at the Capitale, New York on November 8 as he delivered the Toast to Freedom for the Atlas Network:

โ€˜Gallus Gallus Domesticusโ€ฆ.the chicken should be the symbol of the global freedomย movement.โ€™

Surrounded by a room full of โ€˜freedom championsโ€™, Hannan used his speech to attack EU regulations which prevent US food staples such as chlorinated chicken, hormone fed beef and Genetically Modified (GM) foods from sale to the UK.

These were not the demands plastered on the sides of buses during the EU referendumโ€Šโ€”โ€Šduring which Hannan was spokesperson for the officialย Vote Leaveย campaign. Instead, they have become Hannanโ€™s main aimsย sinceย the Leave victory, with rhetoric of new โ€˜opulent marketsโ€™ and using Brexit as a deregulatory mechanism: the core tenet of the โ€˜freedomย movementโ€™.

Connected to 450 free market think tanks across the globe, the Atlas Network is a powerful libertarian group funded by, amongst others, Exxon Mobil and the Koch Foundation (belonging to the billionaire Kochย brothers).

Its overarching goal is โ€˜defeating socialism at every levelโ€™ย according to SourceWatch, through the export of its business-friendly rhetoric and government-limiting ambition worldwide. Its history reveals a ground and state-level war in the name of market liberalisation employing dark money, astroturf groups and think tanks to create a common sense environment in favour of profit, deregulation and absolute corporateย freedom.

The network was founded by Antony Fisher, a British Eton-educated businessman who made his money from US-style intensive chickenย farming.

During a trip to the United States in 1952 Fisher was introduced to new techniques which he brought home to his first battery cage farmโ€Šโ€”โ€Šintroducing the US broiler chicken industry to the UK.

He went on to make millions from his company, Buxted Chicken. With this wealth, and under the instruction of free marketeer Frederick Hayek that think tanks were the best way to guard against socialism, Fisher founded the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) inย 1955.

The London-based IEA is the โ€˜grand-daddyโ€™ think tank of the Atlas Network. Praised with providing the intellectual groundwork for Thatcherism, its work inspired the evolution of the wider Atlas organisation inย 1982.

This chimed with Ronald Reaganโ€™s policies in the US. Husbanded by deregulation promoted by rightwing think tanks, this set in motion a step-change in groupthinkโ€Šโ€”โ€Šwith a powerful intellectual network pushing forward an inherent value in market liberalisation which demonised regulations (including safety standards, liability, worker and consumer protection) as burdensome red tape that obstructed economicย freedom.

Prominent think tank pushers in the US, now members of the Atlas Network, include the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) who led a successful, ultra-moneyed counter attack by the business community on the public interest era that cameย before.

Thomas O McGarity, author ofย Freedom to Harm: The Lasting Legacy of the Laissez Faire Revival,ย explains that these assaults onย regulation:

โ€˜โ€ฆ seemed to come from multiple institutions and had a strong ideological componentโ€ฆafter the 1980 [Ronald Reagan] election the assaults were coming from the White House and from within the agencies as well as from the regulated industries andย thinkย tanks.โ€™

Heritage and the AEI were used to funnel people into Republican administrations and beyond, spreading the movementโ€™s maxims into economics and law professions. By making themselves available to politicians and media for sound-bites, the movement had an important hand in producing the dominant theory of neoliberalism as we now understandย it.

Today, Heritage is at the centre of power. The Foundation had unparalleled access to the Trump transition team and are credited with writing theย blueprintย for Trumpโ€™s economic policy, including his recent taxย cuts.

The IEA remains prominent in the UK too, described by Andrew Marr as โ€˜undoubtedly the most influential think tank in modern British historyโ€™.ย Along with the UK-based Adam Smith Institute (ASI), both are regulars on news and current affairs programmes, parroting their business-friendly deregulatory rhetoric, despite being the most opaque think tanks in the UK when it comes toย funding.

Despite that, they are hardly secretive about their economic agenda. IEA Director Mark Littlewood has explained that he voted for Brexit because it โ€˜was a significant opportunity for deregulationโ€™, while the ASI has produced reports since the referendumย enunciating the benefits of cheap chlorinatedย chicken.

The movement senses new opportunities for an era of favourable policies under Trump, Brexit and a potential USUK Trade deal. Cheap chicken, it seems, is once again symbolic of the potentialย gains.

But there is a real cost to cheap chicken for all, that none of these think tanks and politicians are admitting. And the US broiler industry today is an example of the ideologyโ€™s most rabidย excesses.

The Cost of a Chicken in Every Potโ€Šโ€”โ€ŠTheย Broilerย Industry

The broiler chicken is king in US poultry production. Specially bred for meat consumption, they are the drivers of the sectorโ€™s industrialisation and cheapย prices.

Flocks take five to six weeks to be ready for slaughter. Breeding programmes are used to facilitate rapid growth of flocks, and maximum fattening of theย bird.

As Americaโ€™s most consumed meat, cheap chicken holds political value in Washington. The persistent growth of the industry over recent decades means lawmakers are keen to show they areย on the side of businessย when it comes toย poultry.

This has allowed the lobby to fight effectively on all aspects of regulation, including water protection (a particular problem for the Broiler Beltโ€Šโ€”โ€Šhome to an area of intense commercial chicken farming in the South-East of the US) and safety standards, which the four dominant corporationsโ€Šโ€”โ€ŠTyson, Sanderson Farms, Perdue and Pilgrimโ€™sโ€Šโ€”โ€Šremain committedย to.

There is hardly any regulation on the breeding of chickens themselves aside from welfare standards set by the National Chicken Council, itself funded by the industry. These rules handily define the most cost-efficient methods as the industryย standard.

In 2014, after one of the lobbyโ€™s long-sustained political fights, the industry won the right toย replace official US Department of Agriculture (USDA) meat inspectorsย with staff on the companyโ€™s own payroll. It was exactly the kind of self-regulation food safety advocates had warned about for leaving consumers at risk of knowing less about what theyย buy.

The Southern Poverty Law Centre said more โ€˜taintedโ€™ poultry would end up on Americaโ€™s dinner plates as a result, rendering labels such as โ€˜humanely raisedโ€™ almostย useless.

The US is barely coming to terms with the various effects of corporate consolidation which, as well as being a problem for consumers, also creates organisations who can battle government changes and drive down workingย conditions.

A 2016 studyย revealed that employees receive decreasing levels of pay as an industry becomes more concentrated. A secondย working paper in 2018ย further demonstrated that pay was lower in areas where a small group of companies dominate the jobs market. These are often rural areas, where Trump garneredย support.

This is a complete reversal of the social bargain reached in early 1970s Americaโ€Šโ€”โ€Šthe end of the public interest era when, according to McGarity, scholars believed the social bargain and role of business in society had been decided asย โ€˜what was good for American workers and consumers, not General Motors, was good forย America.โ€™

Today, what is good for industry profits, not workers or consumers, is seen as goodย business.

After doubling production over the last three decades alone, the spiralling decline of working conditions in the chicken industry are even moreย prominent.

This can be explained in part by the broiler industryโ€™s unique contract-farming scheme, through which farmers are employed asย โ€˜growers.โ€™

Corporations own the chickens, the transportation networks and the feed mills. Farmers own the chicken houses and raise the flocks until they are ready to be takenย away.

By 2011, 97% of production relied on contract-farming using broilerย chickens.

But this structure is detrimental to farmers, who report being kept in debt to companies through a variety of techniques, including mandatory upgrades to equipment, reward structures which rank and punish farmers through payments, and otherย conditionalities.

Farmers can invest hundreds of thousands of pounds in chicken houses to ready their farms, and are sold the schemes on the basis of long term profits. Yet as theย author ofย The Meat Racket, Christopher Leonard, explains,ย these schemes mean that farmers are kept in aย โ€˜state of indebted servitude living like modern-day sharecroppers on the ragged edge ofย bankruptcy.โ€™

Upheaval of working contracts has been a supporting demand of the freedom movement, described as โ€˜labour marketย flexibility.โ€™

It allows corporations to use workers more exploitatively, to hire and fire at will, translating to growing precarity forย workers.

After successful neoliberal attacks on unions, workers are subdued further through these changes, receiving a decreasing portion of pay amidst record profits for corporations. In both the US and the UK this has resulted in falling unemployment, but stagnant wages andย increasing in-work poverty.

Insecure contracts also gag farmers who fear punishment-through-the-paycheck for speaking out about their treatment. This is what historian Bryant Simon describes asย โ€˜strategic silencesโ€™โ€Šโ€”โ€Šan inherent element of deregulated industries in the service of cheapย goods.

Silences mask the real costs of products which are extracted from elsewhere in the supply chain. This results in working conditions people have little choice but to accept, and environment pollution withoutย accountability.

Simon examines the trap of cheap goods and deregulation in his new bookย The Hamlet Fire: The Tragic Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government and Cheap Lives.

He discusses the case of the Imperial Foods Processing Plant in Hamlet, North Carolinaโ€Šโ€”โ€Ša factory where processed chicken meat was sent to be fried, battered andย packaged.

On September 3 1991, a fire at the plant killed 25 people. The disaster came as a result of exploitative working conditions, deregulation and little oversight, all of which manager Emmet Roe had deliberately soughtย out.

In eleven years, the plant failed to receive a single safety inspection which could have prevented the fire. There were no sprinklers in the plant and Roe kept the fire doors locked to keep flies out and prevent staff stealing food, amongst a list of other safety rules heย flouted.

Many of Roeโ€™s employees were black single mothers who could not afford to lose their jobs, and they were treated as dispensible. Anyone who complained about fire safety wasย ignored.

When a hydraulic line failure started the fire on the Monday after Labor day in 1991, workers were left trapped inside the building. It would be one of the worst industrial disasters in recent USย history.

Ceding to business demands for deregulation meansย โ€˜weโ€™re letting businesses decide how our factories are run, the safety of our food and really the safety of our communities,โ€™ย Simon tells the Baltimore Sun:

โ€˜We need to recognize the real cost of cheap, the real cost of deregulation. We need to break this cycleโ€Šโ€”โ€Šthis triumph of the systemย ofย cheap.โ€™

Simonโ€™s plea comes as the Donald Trump administration is committing precisely to this dangerousย system.

War onย theย public

Trump is fulfilling the wishes of the business community through hisย โ€˜war on regulationโ€™, but theย wishlistsย come thick andย fast.

Already responsible for huge tax cuts (making organisations like Exxon Mobil and JP Morgan overnight beneficiaries), the removal ofย 67 environmental rulesย and aย one in, two outย policy (which sees two regulations removed for every one instated), the US administration is eagerly looking to unravel other forms of publicย protections.

Deregulation has many forms, and employs different methods to dismantle the public institutions concerned with recourse, oversight or consumerย rights.

For example, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)โ€Šโ€”โ€Šan Obama-era independent watchdog set up after the 2007โ€“8 financial crisis to investigate market abusesโ€Šโ€”โ€Šsalvaged $12bn of consumer relief in nineย years.

Trump brandished the CFPB aย โ€˜total disasterโ€™ย which he promised to bring back to life. By that, he meant kill it from the inside. Trump did this by hiring Mick Mulvaney as CFPB headโ€Šโ€”โ€Ša man who earlier co-sponsored a bill to eliminate the entire organisation. Mulvaney quickly changed the organisationโ€™s mission statement, now listing its primary role as hunting downย โ€˜outdated, unneccessary or unduly burdensome regulation.โ€™ย He also shelved action on predatory lending, data breaches and paydayย lenders.

Similarly, at the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC), Trump elevated Ann Buerkle,ย who Pro Publica reportsย hasย โ€˜never in her fellow commissioners recollection, advocated for the agency to regulate a product the CPSC thinks isย unsafe.โ€™

One of Buerkleโ€™s first moves was to sink legislation requiring portable generator manufacturers to reduce carbon monoxide emissions, a problem known to kill 70 people and poison 2,800 a year in the US.

The chicken lobby also wants in on the new deregulation frenzy, demanding the removal ofย โ€˜arbitraryโ€™ line speed limitsย in chicken slaughterย houses.

The current limit of 140 birds per minute, put in place by the previous administration, was already a token safety measure. The poultry industry, however, wants to work at any speed deemed safe toย โ€˜compete in the global marketplaceโ€™ย (i.e. produce goods more cheaply), insisting that safe working practices have improved and will not beย harmed.

Labour groups and the Government Accountability Office (GAO)ย say different.

In the low wage factories that make up the industry, there are widespread concerns that workers,ย many of whom are immigrants and refugees, do not report injuries for fear of losing theirย jobs.

In 2016, the GAO investigated the industryโ€™sย โ€˜under-reporting problemโ€™,ย concluding they were not getting the full picture from federalย data.

Slaughterhouse workers are already susceptible to danger in an environment of bacteria and sharp tools. Rates of injury are higher for these factory workers, yet the GAO found some were punished for frequent healthย visits.

Debbie Burkowitz from the National Employment Law Project, said there wasย โ€˜no data to support that [abandoning line speed limits] would beย safe.โ€™

Other methods of deregulation by the back door include limiting resources. The filmย โ€˜Under Contractโ€™ย looks at contract-farming and cites the deliberate underfunding of the USDAโ€Šโ€”โ€Šcharged with the protection of farmersโ€Šโ€”โ€Šas a reason for prolongedย violations.

While Trumpโ€™s plans have been met with anger, almost identical policies have been carried out in the UK with lessย furore.

Since 2008, UK policies have led a race to the bottom for working conditions, deregulation and cheap goods, demonstrating the dominance of freedom movement ideology. The UK has also seenย huge corporate tax cuts, successive deregulation bills and an increase from aย โ€˜one in, two outโ€™ policy, toย โ€˜one in, threeย out.โ€™

(Cato Instituteโ€Šโ€”โ€Šanother US Atlas Network member,ย discussed โ€˜Lessons from the UKโ€™ in regards to this policyย last year. Cato were named as one of the participants in recent โ€˜shadow trade talksโ€™)

In 2015, former banker turned UK Communities Secretary Sajid Javid beamed to businesses that theย UK had cut ยฃ10bn of red tape between 2010โ€“2015, becoming the โ€˜first government in recent history to reduce overall levels of regulationโ€™,ย with theย โ€˜lowest burdenโ€™ย in the G7.

This has tallied with wage contraction despite economic growthโ€Šโ€”โ€Šjust like the US chicken industry. Deregulation under Brexit will come on top of an already raidedย rulebook.


Credit: Financial Times, UK only country in G20 to achieve economic growth and wage contractionย sinceย 2007

Two years later the same Communities Secretary would beย issuing assurancesย to the residents of UK tower blocks, after the Grenfell Tower fire on June 14ย 2017.

Cheap flammable cladding used in a renovation the previous year caused the fire to spread and kill at least 71 people in a Central Londonย borough.

Like the Hamlet Fire, safety inspections could have found faults but were cancelled due toย fire service cuts. Sprinklers were not a part of the renovation and the government sat on a report regarding action on tower block conditions. Residents who raised concerns at Grenfell Tower wereย threatened with legal action.

Deeming these events unpredictable breeds further unaccountability in a faceless system. In previous eras, regulation was used to prevent tragedies repeating, but the UK government has failed to act by replacing cladding at otherย towers.

By December 2017,ย โ€˜not a single pennyโ€™ย had been set aside to deal with the issue. Further, aย report by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earthย found that a government-backed cross-party group called the Red Tape Initiative had met to discuss what regulation could be removed under Brexit in regards to fire safety, on the very morning of the fire. The group is led by Oliver Letwin, who authored some of the deregulation bills passed in recentย years.

Business as usual returned quicker thanย ever.

Specialย Relationships

Like Liam Fox, the UKโ€™s International Trade Secretary, Daniel Hannan has made frequent visits to the Heritage Foundation over recentย years.

Hannan and Fox are also connected to theย American Legislative Exchange Councilย (ALEC), funded by the billionaire Koch Brothers, Exxon Mobil, Pfizer, private prison companies and any organisation willing to pay the thousands of dollars of membershipย fees.

The group boasts of submitting one thousand new legislations each year with 20% becoming law. Harsher sentencing, lowering minimum wage, fighting environmental laws and (perhaps unsurprisingly) rules dubbed โ€˜ag-gag lawsโ€™ which prevent people from investigating factory farming practices, are some of ALECโ€™sย recommendations.

ALEC is a group that changes the shape of US governance daily, in the interests of itsย donors.

Hannanโ€™sย declaration of MEP financial interests in 2009ย revealed that ALEC paid for some of his US flights. Liam Foxโ€™s own organisation, Atlantic Bridge, was in partnership with ALEC before being shut down after an investigation by the charityย commission.

(Jamie Doward reported in 2011 for the Guardianย that โ€˜a typical themeโ€™ of one Atlantic Bridge conference wasย โ€˜Killing the Golden Gooseโ€Šโ€”โ€ŠHow Regulation and Legislation are Damaging Wealth Creation.ย Another was calledย โ€˜How Much Health Care Can Weย Afford?โ€™)

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Margaret Thatcher was a patron of Foxโ€™s think tank and the board included William Hague, Michael Gove and Georgeย Osborne.

Corporate coziness forced Liam Fox to resign as Defence Secretary in 2011, but those same connections made himย indispensible in November 2016, after the election of Donald Trump. With Fox and Hannan at the centre of the movement, they celebrated in true Atlas Network styleโ€Šโ€”โ€Šthe launch of a new thinkย tank.

In September, Boris Johnson used a government building toย inaugurate the Initiative for Free Tradeโ€Šโ€”โ€Šan organisation led by Daniel Hannan, and granted an opening speech by Liamย Fox.

Foxโ€™s relationship with the US hard-right will see him define our negotiations. In one of their first meetings, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was adamant that theย UK must concede on food standards.

This is a second chance for Big Agricultureโ€Šโ€”โ€Šone of the most aggressive forces in the now-dormant Trans Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) dealโ€Šโ€”โ€Šwhich sought mass deregulation and secret courts to account for lost corporate profits, as well as the freedom of its goods across the EU.

And they donโ€™t come much bigger than the worldโ€™s new agrichemical giants who have already started their assault on public opinion and legislation in the UK.

Helloย Monsanto

Hannanโ€™s toast rested on one underpinning of regulation in particular, whose loss would signal a complete upheaval of UK agriculture. This underpinning is responsible for the chasm between US and UK food standards, and regarded by many as the foundation of all regulatory protection for environment and food safetyโ€Šโ€”โ€Šthe Precautionaryย Principle.

With increasing use of technology and chemical enhancement across industries, the risk factor rises. The precautionary principle reverses the burden of proof when the danger is high, so that a product must be proven to be safe beyond reasonable doubt. But precaution is exactly the kind of word the freedom movement has worked to malign, and now they want to put an emphasis onย โ€˜innovation above caution.โ€™ย This would result in the reversal of the Precautionary Principle, to the US approachโ€Šโ€”โ€Šwhere the danger must be proved before a product isย banned.

The opportunity has pricked the ears of, among others, American seed giant Monsanto. Theย Times reported the company was eyeing up the opportunityย to grow Genetically Modified (GM) crops in Britain afterย Brexit.

Until now, Monsanto has had a relatively small presence in the UK, and GM food has taken a backseat to headlines about chlorinated chicken. But the emergence of GM would constitute some of the biggest changes we could see when it comes toย food.

Just when the UK may be introduced to such products, the industry is undergoing unprecedented corporate consolidation, with a handful of companies wielding global power over the future ofย food.

Following mergers between Dow and DuPont, and Syngenta and ChemChina, German giant Bayer is hoping to close aย $63bn deal with Monsantoย as soon as possibleโ€Šโ€”โ€Šreducing the worldโ€™s six agrichemical giants to just three, between them controlling 60% of the worldโ€™s seed and pesticideย market.

Yes US farmers are worried. The mergers leave them with less choice, less competition and no options to escape increasingย prices.

The giants say the mergers mean more innovation, but farmers are unconvinced and feel trapped. Dee Vaughn, Chairman of the Texas Corn Producers Issues Committeeย told Texas Tribune:

โ€˜We have to buy seeds; They have us in a situation where we have to buy their produce. But they still have the ability to go even higher onย theirย prices.โ€™

So much forย choice.

Bayer and Monsanto were hoping to have the deal wrapped up by the end of 2017, but anti trust investigations and legal battles have stalled progress. The EU is expected to return the decision of its review onย March 12.


Credit:ย Corporate European Observatory, The Bayer-Monsanto merger has been described as a โ€˜marriage made in hellโ€™ byย campaigners

Monsantoโ€™s farming technology largely involves producing higher yields and enhanced seeds. For example, a weedkiller containing the chemical dicamba can be sold with accompanying resistant seeds, allowing farmers to kill weeds without harming crops. Sales of dicamba rose after weeds became increasingly resistant to the previous RoundUPย product.

This has created a whole new agricultural crisis in the US today, which demonstrates the advanced risks of new technology and corporateย dominance.

Dicamba is susceptible to drift, which means it can form vapour clouds which spread onto neighbouring fields, where crops are at risk if they are not resistant to theย product.

Over the last 18 months,ย 3.6 million acresย of the US farm belt suffered from dicamba drift after a spike in sales, resulting in the investigation of 1,400 complaints across 17ย states.

It has created deep tension amongst farmers who have no recourse and are not insured for dicamba drift. In 2016,ย an Arkansas Sheriff confirmed a farmer fatally shot a neighbourย due to a dispute over the chemical. Another Arkansas Farmer, Nathan Reed, whoseย crop was damaged by dicamba use two miles away, said itย โ€˜put using non-GMOs [Genetically Modified Organisms] atย risk.โ€™

To counter the backlash,ย Monsanto began offering a cash incentiveย to farmers to use the controversial dicamba products even as regulators were starting to weigh in on how to approach the issue and the chemical was causing a new emergency across the US.

Dangers come not only from damaging technology, but corporations who fight to continue using it, just to maintain industryย domination.

Could this really be a part of Monsantoโ€™s business strategy? Kyle Steigart, Professor of Agricultural & Applied Economics at University of Wisconsin believes so. Responding to the incident,ย Steigart explained:

โ€˜Monsanto has been an aggressive business entity in dominating the industry for some time now. I would see the dicamba situation as just another step in thatย direction.โ€™

Nevertheless, the ground is being prepared and public opinion shaped. Last week,ย Open Democracy reportedย that SynGenta had signed a major commercial deal with ESI Media through which the chemical giant ran a series of public โ€˜debatesโ€™ and articles on the โ€˜future of foodโ€™ through Londonโ€™s free paperโ€Šโ€”โ€ŠThe Evening Standard, edited by ex-Chancellor Georgeย Osborne.

Billion dollar legal challenges, orchestrated attacks on scientists by the company and controversy over the prospect of GM foods in the UK were all omitted from the coverageโ€Šโ€”โ€Šall part of aย โ€˜growing practice inside ESI Media which deliberately blurs the line between advertising and editorial content,โ€™ย Open Democracyย found.

Syngenta and Monsanto are among the companies currently engaged in intensive lobbying duringย Brexit.

The merits and demerits of GMO products deserve rigorous public debate, but GMO companies have long battled to prevent consumers from knowing what they areย buying.

โ€˜GMOs were introduced in the US with no warnings whatsoeverโ€™ย explains Helena Paul, Co-Founder ofย Eco-Nexus.

In 2015, the food industryย spent more than $100mย in the US on GMO-related issues to prevent mandatory labelling and state-by-state approaches to regulation after Vermont intended to make changes to inform consumers. President Barack Obama failed to introduce labelling for GMOs despite making a campaign promise. Now, food companies complain that labelling would createย โ€˜stigmaโ€™ย about foods which are, supposedly, scientificallyย safe.

But how can we have the choice Daniel Hannan speaks of if we donโ€™t know what we areย eating?

Image: Leftโ€Šโ€”โ€ŠExpress, July 2017โ€Šโ€”โ€ŠRees-Mogg, a hard brexiteer, says items will be cheaper after Brexit but this disguises other costs, chlorinated chicken is projected to be 21% cheaper according to ASI / Rightโ€Šโ€”โ€ŠIndependent, Dec 2016โ€Šโ€”โ€ŠRees-Mogg says Brexit could mean slashing safety and environmentย standards.

The Atlas Network is a global pusher of corporate interests, and some of its well-placed main players are engaging in a coup against public rights and protections during the Brexitย transition.

Hard Brexiteers will sell us narratives of cheap products and consumer choice, but it comes with hidden costs and the choices are not what they seem. What we wonโ€™t hear is promises of better living standards, higher wages, healthier lives or stronger rights, because this rhetoric hides a continued race to theย bottom.

This is a strategic silence that must beย broken.

This article was originally published on Insurge and Realย Media.

Image:ย jlastras/Wikimedia Commonsย CC BYSAย 2.0

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