Please submit your final questions now. The U.S. sees safely standards and labeling requirements as creating barriers to free trade while nations of the EC view such requirements as protecting the safety of food for consumers. My inclination is that eventually we'll have to accept some form of labelling. The debate is degraded, when WTO supporters put words in the mouths of the protesters. And the opportunity for productive discussion is reduced when only the most extreme positions are entertained.
Globalization is a fact of economic life, which most reasonable people concede.
But, we cannot permit others to foul the planet, on their side of the border, while requiring our own economic system to maintain higher environmental standards. Rather, we need to bring the developing counties, and the older struggling economies into the new millenium, with equitable and higher environmental practices across the board, particularly in energy developments. The best way to do that is trade with these other countries, so they get richer and their people demand these standards. Refusing to trade with them, or raising barriers to their products, will consign these countries to lower income growth, and thus will defeat the very objectives we all share. I don't think so.