Letters - October 31, 2012

Truly biomess

Universal health scare

Fall of golden fibre

Food safety mess

Taking on agribusiness

AS the Occupy Wall Street movement became persistent and powerful, it developed offshoots.

Subverting a basic human right

The new draft National Water Policy circulated by the Union Ministry of Water Resources to water experts suggests that the government is poised to withdraw from its responsibility of water service delivery, and that multinational corporations and financial institutions might have too big a say in water allocation and policy.

Secretive tribunals, hidden damages

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) appears to have generated the most number of investor-state treaties and shows that rich countries are as much at risk as developing countries. Would you agree?  Interviewee:  Gus Van Harten

India’s many investment treaties make it vulnerable

Would it be correct to say that all countries are at risk from BITs and FTAs although the treaties are targeted at developing countries? Interviewee:  Nathalie Bernas...

Justice league for people’s rights

What is the Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT)? Interviewee:  Gianni Tognoni

What’s in your Honey?

Universally, honey is believed to be a natural product. Regulations across the world say as much. The Codex Alimentarius Commission is a global body set up jointly by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to develop food standards for international trade; it defines honey as “the natural sweet substance produced by honeybees from the nectar of plants or from secretions of living parts of plants or excretions of plant-sucking insects on the living parts of plants, which the bees collect, transform by combining with specific substances of their own, deposit, dehydrate, store and leave in the honeycomb to ripen and mature”.