80 groups sign
letter to Senators
opposing nomination
of Islam Siddiqui to top ag trade post
Jan Shepel
Associate Editor
WASHINGTON
Eighty groups have joined together to protest the appointment of the top U.S. ag trade representative, saying that the nominee has a “clear affiliation with the agricultural input industry and its ‘free’ trade agenda.”
Last week the nomination came under fire from environmentalists and this week several farm groups joined consumer, anti-hunger, fishing, public health and other advocacy groups in opposing the nomination.
In a letter to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus and ranking member Charles Grassley, the groups urged the rejection of Islam Siddiqui as chief agriculture negotiator at the office of the United States Trade Representative.
The groups, which included the National Family Farm Coalition, Pesticide Action Network, Friends of the Earth and Farmworkers Association of Florida, said they organized the protest to Siddiqui partly because he was warmly endorsed by a group of 40 agribusiness industry groups and because of his ties to the pesticide industry.
Some Washington bloggers have called Siddiqui’s nomination a “coup” for the pesticide industry.
Also signing on to the letter were several Wisconsin-based organizations – the Cornucopia Institute, Family Farm Defenders and the American Raw Milk Producer Pricing Association.
Siddiqui is currently the vice president of regulatory affairs at CropLife America – a trade association that includes companies involved in crop protection products – including Monsanto, DuPont, Dow and Syngenta.
His nomination was scheduled to be taken up by Baucus’s committee this week.
The groups signing on to the protest letter called for a change to what they called a “failed free trade agenda” that has deepened global crises in food, environment and health.
The groups’ opposition to the nominee is based on positions Siddiqui took while he was at U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as the undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs and statements he made when employed as a CropLife America lobbyist. He was a senior agricultural trade advisor during the Clinton administration.
Last weekend more than 38,000 concerned individuals also signed a petition urging President Obama to reconsider recent industry-friendly appointments to key government agriculture posts, including Siddiqui. They said in their petition that this appears to be a textbook case of the revolving door between industry and government; both the letter and the citizen petition cite Siddiqui’s record and positions at CropLife America as cause for concern.
In particular they are concerned about his comments about allowing countries to exercise the “precautionary principle” in regulating genetically modified crops.
Siddiqui was also part of the USDA team that worked on the first proposed organic standards – those that quickly became controversial for proposing that organic farmers be allowed to use sludge, genetically modified organisms and irradiated food under organic certification.
Those lobbying against Siddiqui’s nomination said a regional partner of CropLife America notoriously shuddered at Michelle Obama’s organic White House garden, and launched a letter-writing campaign urging the First Lady to use chemical pesticides.
Dena Hoff, a Montana farmer and vice-president of the National Family Farm Coalition, said the current food crisis, water crisis and climate crisis have been exacerbated by our trade agreements and by the World Trade Organization continuing to push failed chemical-intensive and biotech solutions.
Hoff said she believes the U.S. can do better than nominating a former pesticide lobbyist to this key position.
While heartened by Michelle Obama’s campaign to recognize the importance of local, sustainable and healthy food, Hoff said the White House has severely undermined their credibility with this nomination.
Ian Illuminato of Friends of the Earth urged the Senate to vote down the nomination. “Senators should consider the message they would send by making a pesticide industry lobbyist our country’s chief agricultural trade negotiator, creating at least the appearance of a conflict of interest,” said Illuminato in a statement.
“With farmers here and abroad struggling to respond to water scarcity and increasingly volatile growing conditions, we need a resilient and restorative model of agriculture that adapts to and mitigates these effects of climate change,” the 80 groups said in their letter to the Senate committee.
They called on Senators to reject Siddiqui’s nomination and “reorient trade policy to serve the interests of family farmers, farmworkers, consumers and the planet.”
