For too long, debates over international trade have been dominated by corporate elites and economic ideologues, rather than rooted in the experiences of ordinary Americans. 

The Trade Stories Project allows people who have been affected by policies and institutions like NAFTA and the WTO to share their views on a matter crucial to the global economy. 

This includes displaced workers, farmers, small business owners and immigrants who have been typically excluded from the trade debate.

Joe Logan

Trumbull County, OH

Joe is a 5^th generation family farmer from northeast Ohio and former president of the Ohio Farmers Union.  He currently manages the Agriculture Program at the Ohio Environmental Council. 

“That is what much of the livestock industry has evolved into today:  a very integrated system whereby independent family farmers have been replaced by contract farmers essentially that only get their livelihood by virtue of a contract to a major integrator… The integrated system certainly has its benefits.  It’s very highly productive.  What it doesn’t do is treat farmers very well.  What it does do, unfortunately, is expose a lot of animals to some rather horrid situations…

“They have systematically gutted the United States and other countries of that local processing infrastructure that used to be so valuable to rural communities.  You know, they’d have a local slaughterhouse, and a local cheese-processing place, and now those things are very rare in rural communities…

“I have traditionally been a dairy farmer… and worked with livestock all my life.  We used to use an antibiotic in this country called chloramphenicol.  It’s a very powerful antibiotic that was very effective for a whole bunch of diseases or afflictions that cows might have… About 15 years ago, the FDA took it off the market abruptly and immediately and the reason was… they discovered it caused aplastic anemia, which is a form of leukemia, in children.  Even just touching it would expose one to that problem… Veterinarians couldn’t even prescribe it if they thought it was the only antiobiotic that would work.  It was completely off the market. 

“I thought the company that made it had ceased production and that the supplies were all gone and…. that the world was safe from chloramphenicol.  I read in the paper a few months ago that shrimp coming from Southeast Asia and South America is now contaminated with chloramphenicol.  Turns out that as our natural fish populations have dwindled because of industrial farming and fish farming has become widespread in Southeast Asia and South America, waters become contaminated of course, then the large fish farming and agri-business conglomerates start to add antibiotics in order to keep those fish stores more healthy. 

“Knowing how dangerous this compound is, one wonders how it gets onto our shores.  The reality is that since those agricultural products meet the standards in that exporting country, whether that is Argentina, or Panama, or Indonesia, or Vietnam, we cannot stop them at our borders, or it is an ‘unfair trade’ penalty and the U.S. could be sued for not accepting their products.  So it brings this unfairness and inequity in trade standards…

“In order to facilitate the international trade in dairy products, the WTO created the Codex Alimentarius which is a regiment of international trading and food safety standards… They have allowed Indian farmers, since they can’t get it to a refrigeration place or processing plant in a timely fashion, Codex Alimentarius allows them to adulterate this milk with hydrogen peroxide which tends to kill the bacteria and keep it in a useable supply until weeks pass and they can get it to a processing facility.  So much of the dairy ingredients that compete with American dairy farmers here — the milk protein concentrate and the caseinates — may be sourced from Indian farmers…

“That is an incidence of how radically different technologies can be incorporated and sanitary regimens can be incorporated into this great global marketing system we have.  Family farming is really encountering some very, very tough sledding.”