Urgent: Ask Your Representative to Say ‘No’ to CAFTA

Sometime in the next two days, the U.S. House of Representatives will vote on DR-CAFTA (the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement). If this bill passes, it will be a disaster for farmed animals. All the major front groups for the meat, egg, and dairy industries, including the National Chicken Council, the American Meat Institute, the National Pork Producers Council, and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, are aggressively lobbying in support of DR-CAFTA. Why do these industries, which profit from the suffering of animals, support this trade agreement? Because DR-CAFTA will open the doors for enormous animal-abusing corporations like Tyson, Pilgrim’s Pride, and Smithfield to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into building new factory farms in Central America. As more and more Americans turn toward vegetarianism, these industries are desperate to find new markets for their unhealthy, inhumane products. DR-CAFTA will make it much easier for these corporations to peddle flesh, eggs, and dairy in Central America.

Millions of farmed animals will suffer (even more than they already do) on factory farms if DR-CAFTA passes. While the meat industry doles out contributions to politicians on Capitol Hill, it’s vital that everyone who cares about animals make their voices heard. Please immediately call (it’s too late for letters) your representative and ask him or her to stop DR-CAFTA in its tracks.

Visit http://www.Congress.org to find your representative’s phone number.
CAFTA is a human rights and environmental issue as well as an animal welfare issue. For more info on CAFTA please visit... http://www.stopcafta.org/article.php?list=type&type=2

(majority of content from PETA action alert fwd.)

Despite everyone's obvious interest in this issue, :no:
CAFTA passed.

Laura..don't confuse a lack of response here with a lack of interest. My comments to my representative were sent long ago, not because of AR issue, but because it's a sucky bill with regard to human rights.

I think I may actually be more bothered by the crap demonstrated during the vote. The Republican leaders inlcluding Bush and Cheney reportedly bullying some Reps into changing their vote...the Republican leadership holding open the vote WELL past the allotted time, so they could continue said harassment of Representatives...later, hurriedly closing the vote so that a "no" voting Rep (who was making her way across town) could not vote. Now, I'm not saying that the Democrats haven't pulled the same kind of crap, but it wasn't exactly a shining moment for Democracy. :(

Passed by a whopping 2 votes. Guess that qualifies as a mandate, too?

that's horrible. :no:

I read in the paper that one guy voted no and it showed up as yes or accidentally voted yes or something like that. So the vote WOULD have been tied. I lobbied against CAFTA last month in dc... Well I guess America gets to go exploit some impoverished farmers in central America and disregard the environment and fair labor standards so our huge companies can get even richer... go us.

If this was in the Compost Heap, I'd have replied. :yes:

I'll leave it at that.

kelly, that's actually probably an appropriate place for the thread. :)

Despite everyone's obvious interest in this issue, :no:
CAFTA passed.Free Trade and Globalization are very abstract, tends to reconfirm previous positions, makes it very difficult to persuade the other.

I remember sitting and watching a documentary about the seattle protests and during afterwards the discussion sucked, nobody could really tell me why it was a bad thing, they just tried to work with prejudices like "animal killing agricorps stand to benefit" but so does everyone else.

Capitalism reaching out and making everyone wealthy through trade sounds pretty good. If you want to look at modern countries which have avoided foreign trade there's really only Kampuchia and North Korea.

That whole article doesn't make any sense to me.

the congresspeople are more concerned with how it will help the companies in which they own stock rather than what commoners think. they also consider the lobbyist that bribe them i suppose. they care about themselves, not others.

Poor little non-human farm animals. *sniff*