Rather than emphasizing the importance of regulation as a means to ensure food and product safety, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Trade Ministers’ Report to Leaders seems to indicate that the goal is to increase trade for trade’s sake. In particular, the text reads:

“Regulatory and other non-tariff barriers increasingly are the major hurdles that companies face in gaining access to foreign markets. To address these barriers, we have agreed to work to improve regulatory practices, eliminate unnecessary barriers, reduce regional divergence in standards, promote transparency, conduct our regulatory processes in a more trade-facilitative manner, eliminate redundancies in testing and certification and promote cooperation on specific regulatory issues.”

There is no mention of the prime importance of avoiding the toxic pet food, toothpaste, and toy scandals of recent years.  In fact, food safety is only noted in a sentence that ensures that the Trans-Pacific FTA will “build upon existing WTO [World Trade Organization] rights and obligations,” obligations that have already interfered with US laws on dolphin-safe tuna labeling and country-of-origin labels on beef.