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NEWS
November
13th 2002
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Arms for Farms On 18th October, British ambassador Lloyd Smith and Deputy Prime Minister General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh signed a deal worth £1 billion guaranteeing financial help to Thailand to develop its agricultural industry and the promotion of Thai food produce in Britain and around the world in exchange for Britain supplying Thailand with Hawk jets, guns, riot control equipment and second-hand frigates. The government has long boasted of its environmental and ethical foreign policy and made public its support for British agriculture. It has publicly stated that it will meet the genuine and serious concerns within the farming community, helping its recovery from foot and mouth and address the overall decline of profitability in the sector. In fact, signing this deal is yet another blow to an industry devastated by cheap imports; according to Poulex, Britain's £65bn food industry is on the ‘brink of collapse’. The industry blames too much regulation, but the underlying cause for decline is the global free market in food, fiercely encouraged by the government. So important is the free market in agriculture that the British government’s response to foot and mouth resulted in costs to tourism and agriculture of £9 billion, carried out in order to save the meat and dairy export market just £630 million. Meanwhile, more and more goods are unnecessarily flown, shipped and trucked around the world, consuming ever more fossil fuels and releasing ever more greenhouse gases. With the government promising to help protect the environment and British agriculture, it is astonishing that it would sign a trade deal that seeks to further the profits of the arms industry and sell a poor country something it doesn’t need and can’t afford, at the expense of British agriculture, environment, and public health. A Foreign Office spokesman has denied that it was an 'arms-for-aid' deal because it would be BAe Systems investing in Thailand's agriculture sector and not the British state. This seems all the more mysterious considering that the deal was conceived - or at the very least discussed - at a meeting in May when the Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra visited the UK and met Defence Minister Geoff Hoon and Trade Minister Patricia Hewitt. In addition to discussing the secret deal, Hewitt also agreed to help Thailand overturn an EU ban on the import of Thai chicken. The ban was introduced after it was discovered that Thai poultry contained the banned antibiotic Chloramphenicol; a substance potentially fatal if ingested by humans, causing aplastic anaemia which stops bone marrow from producing blood cells. It is hardly shocking to find that British agribusiness blames regulations for the loss of its profitability considering that less regulated - and potentially harmful - imports are favoured over more-regulated British produce. Although the Department of Trade and Industry refused to comment on the deal, the Foreign Office has been more candid, telling The Guardian 'it will modernise Thai armed forces and help it combat terrorism, at the same time alleviating poverty and improving its food production'. What is surprising is that the National Farmers Union that put heavy pressure on the government to carry out the policy of culling in the foot and mouth epidemic, and the devoutly free-market Liberal Democrats, call the deal ‘extraordinary’ and ‘deeply depressing and disgraceful’. The real solution lies in a radical re-evaluation of the free-market policies advocated by neoliberal governments, a removal of agriculture from the WTO’s remit, and a move towards local production -and as far as possible - local sustainability. Sources: http://www.observer.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,837135,00.html
Profile of BAe Systems
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