Not only are they trying to race to the bottom of being able to profit from import of unsafe foods, but multinationals are also using the WTO to force other countries to import unsafe food from US too.
Check out this ruling by the WTO on Mexico's attempt to encourage soft drink manufacturers to use its own cane sugar instead of HFCS additives for sweetening soft drinks like coke through tariffs.
The WTO complains that this tariff is a trade barrier that shouldn't be there in the interest of "free trade", even though it is ignoring that the U.S. subsidizes corn-based products, which has really created this situation where Mexico has to put up tariffs to protect its sugar industry.
The side effect of this is that in effect the WTO and these trade agreements is being used to push HFCS into other countries, which arguably forces them to use more unhealthy products, since HFCS is arguably the cause of greater and earlier incidences of disease like diabetes.
http://www.geocities.com/jonclark500/stories/coke.htmlThe bottom line is that these trade agreements and the WTO, etc. aren't there to help enforce fair labor practices, environmental concerns, or health concerns in their rulings, but to push laws that feeds those that have control over it, the multinationals' interests in profit, and damn everything else that stands in the way of that!