Friends of the Earth: Campaign Express: News and updates: Rapid response - Protect your right to energy-saving information

Protect your right to energy-saving information

Rapid Response - November 2005

Countries including Korea, the United States and China are claiming that eco-labelling is bad for their economies and acts as a barrier to trade. They want to overturn other basic measures too. These include:

labels which show whether a product is recyclable
labels which show whether a product has any recycled content e.g. paper
labelling which shows sustainable sourcing such as ‘dolphin-friendly' tuna
safety testing on imported foods, like compulsory testing for lethal toxins in shellfish.

The Government has said we're not in danger of losing our hard-won environmental regulation and standards. But if the issue isn't up for debate, why is it on the WTO agenda?

The UK is influential on the world stage. If we don't contest this no one else will. We want Prime Minister Tony Blair to use his influence with our EU Commissioner for Trade, Peter Mandelson, to ensure the EU opposes these challenges.

But there's a chance other countries will push these proposals through to undermine our national laws. If this happens we want the Government to guarantee it will continue to apply UK and EU eco-labelling laws whatever the WTO decides.

Ask Tony Blair to protect our rights to environmental standards information so we can continue to make ethical choices for the future.