The Precautionary Principle and More European Parliament Bovine Excrement

[Guest guest]

Hi y'all,

 

Those who are tired of me criticizing the ridiculous antics of the

European Parliament are (1) in the wrong business and (2) advised to

delete this post now .. finally .. don't count on me stopping the

criticism until the members of the European Parliament get their heads

out of those places where the sun doesn't shine.

 

Odds are we'll be hard pressed to find a European who will disagree with

my criticism but some Liberal Americans don't like any criticism of

organizations that claims to be progressive.

 

The below post .. and an article .. were sent to me today by two

different folks .. one is a European.

 

The vote below was held on 17 November 2005.

 

> What was voted on yesterday by the European Parliament was on the

> establishment of a European chemical safety agency. They are tasked

> with checking on health issues surrounding over 30,000 chemicals. In

> theory that seems fine, but as before, they have refused to make an

> exception for chemicals in plant extracts. An amendment allowing this

> failed in Parliament!!!!

 

This misses the effect of offsets/balances in natural synergies .. and

looks only at chemical components in isolation .. extremely amateurish.

 

> This could mean that if the idiot scientists come across a chemical in

> an essential oil that is not on any database, that it could be

> classified as a " new " chemical and if it is produced in volumes over 10

> KG the producer must supply health and safety data. The implications of

> that are more serious for oils and herbs than anything to date. As

> usual all this has been going on under wraps with the big oil and

> chemicals trade bodies not telling the public what they have been

> negotiating. I only heard about it via a TV teletext report and then I

> emailed my trade contact. He confirmed he knew about it but implied

> botanicals would not be covered. Then I sent an email to the EEC office

> dealing with it and the guy confirmed that botanicals would now be

> included in the new regulations. So now we wait to see what will happen

> as many trades using botanical extracts will be affected. The hope is

> that when the regs go back to Parliament that some more changes will be

> accepted. I do not think the MEPs have been given accurate information

> on which to cast their vote. Can you imagine the Italians being told

> they cannot use Basil pesto because it contains dangerous chemicals!!

 

Yes .. I can imagine Big Brother telling people they are not smart

enough to know what is good for them. They do it daily in the EU. I do

all I can to warn the Turks against such intervention and control.

 

The next one someone sent me is below.

 

> Health activists protest *** because the European Union has banned

> *** (various chemicals because) *** it must be dangerous. This sounds

> compelling, but it displays a rather simplistic understanding of what

> Europe has actually done. The ban *** (on various chemicals) is a

> result of legislation dubbed REACH (Registration, Evaluation and

> Authorization of Chemicals), which requires chemicals to be banned

> if they cannot be proven safe. This may, on the face of it, seem

> eminently sensible; but explaining what Europe's embrace of the

> precautionary principle meant in practice, philosopher Roger Scruton

> revealed it's essentially paranoid take on the world:

>

> " If you think there is a risk, then there is a risk; and if there

> is a risk, then forbid it. "

 

 

U.S. Should Not Import European Laws

 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,175952,00.html

 

Thursday, November 17, 2005

By Steven Milloy

 

As globalization fosters economic growth around the world, Americans

should be vigilant of an unintended consequence: the imposition on U.S.

businesses and consumers of the non-science-based, environmentalist-

promoted, European Union-embraced standard known as the " precautionary

principle. "

 

The precautionary principle is the subject of a new Washington Legal

Foundation report entitled " Exporting Precaution: How Europe's

Risk-Free Regulatory Agenda Threatens American Free Enterprise. "

http://www.wlf.org/upload/110405MONOKogan.pdf

 

Authored by Lawrence Kogan of the Institute for Trade Standards and

Sustainable Development, the report describes how " international

bureaucrats and influential activist groups use the precautionary

principle as a vehicle to diminish America's competitive position in

the global economy and advance special interest agendas hostile to free

enterprise and technology. "

 

Kogan aptly calls the precautionary principle " regulation without

representation. "

 

The precautionary principle is a scheme for establishing environmental,

health and safety regulations that are based on irrational fears rather

than empirical science.

 

Under the precautionary principle, activities, products and substances

may be banned or restricted if it is merely possible that they or the

processes used for their manufacture, formulation or assembly might

cause health or environmental harm under some unknown and unspecified

future circumstances. In other words: It focuses on purely hypothetical

risks rather than actual hazards.

 

The precautionary principle inherently rejects scientific and

cost-benefit analysis as bases for regulation. It is arbitrariness

unleashed in the hands of powerful government regulators and others who

have no use for facts or common sense.

 

Although the European Union expressly admitted that no evidence

indicates biotech foods are less safe than conventional foods, the EU's

precautionary principle-based Biosafety Protocol was used to block more

than $2 billion worth of U.S. biotech crop exports from 1998 to 2005,

according to Kogan.

 

The EU's Cosmetics Directive bans the use of chemicals called

" phthalates " in cosmetic products even though no scientific data

suggest that consumer exposure to phthalates in cosmetics and personal

care products poses a human health risk. By also banning animal testing

on most cosmetics prior to consumer use, Kogan says, a strictly applied

Cosmetics Directive would run counter to U.S. laws and regulations

mandating animal testing of cosmetics classified as over-the-counter

drugs and require reformulation of almost all current cosmetics

products.

 

The EU also intends to make the garbage pail obsolete by presuming that

all trash is hazardous. Under the precautionary principle, EU

businesses must develop " life cycle management principles " that include

" take-back " provisions under which businesses must reclaim and dispose

of all new products put on the market upon their obsolescence, mostly

at business' expense.

 

The EU also applies the precautionary principle to industrial

chemicals, disinfectants, preservatives and global warming. Science is

out; capriciousness is in.

 

The tangible impact of the precautionary principle is immense.

 

" The administrative, financial and legal burdens imposed by EU

precaution-based environmental regulations are cumulatively equivalent

to a hidden business tax that, as of 1999, constituted as much as 15

percent of the new capital invested by certain European industry

sectors, " writes Kogan.

 

The precautionary principle may help to explain why EU nations lag

behind the U.S. in economic growth. According to a June 2004 report

from the Swedish think tank Timbro, U.S. gross domestic product (the

measure of the value of the goods and services produced by a country in

a given year), was 17 percent higher than the nearest European country,

Switzerland.

 

There are also intangible costs associated with the precautionary

principle. Intellectual property rights are compromised because

confidential information must be shared among producers, intermediaries

and distributors in a product's vertical supply chain. Labeling steers

consumers to bureaucrat- and environmentalist-preferred products, such

as those labeled " eco-friendly, " rather than politically incorrect

brand name goods.

 

It doesn't take too much to imagine the harm the precautionary

principle could do if imported into the U.S. as a legal standard.

Existing standards of negligence, strict liability, products liability

and public nuisance might go out the window in favor of legal outcomes

like the $253 million verdict against Merck in a recent Vioxx trial.

 

Although Merck had complied with all legal requirements for testing and

labeling and there was no scientific evidence supporting the verdict,

emotional jurors nevertheless wanted to send Merck and the drug

industry a precautionary principle-tyoe message: `Stop doing the

minimum to put your drug on the market, " Kogan points out.

 

And all this may be coming our way.

 

Kogan describes how American and European environmental and so-called

" social responsibility " groups operated fear campaigns to generate

public pressure for the EU to implement the precautionary principle.

Now, these same groups are using strict EU laws and regulations as a

platform for promoting similar regulatory change in the U.S.

 

Large multinational corporations, primary instruments of globalization

that are subject to EU regulation, are now trying to import those same

regulations back to the U.S. General Electric, for example, is subject

to the EU-adopted Kyoto Protocol, and is actively advocating that

Congress enact global warming regulation. Significantly hampered by its

self-inflicted wound, the EU supports U.S. adoption of the

precautionary principle as a means to become more economically

competitive with American products and services.

 

We ought to take action " to extinguish the complex threat posed by the

precautionary principle, " Kogan writes. " The stakes are very high.

America's very enterprise system, individual freedoms and international

interests may be hanging in the balance. "

 

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and CSRwatch.com, is adjunct

scholar at the Cato Institute, and is the author of Junk Science Judo:

Self-defense Against Health Scares and Scams (Cato Institute, 2001).