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FTAA also prohibits individual governments from banning genetically modified (GM) foods and seeds. This policy's implications for public health and the environment are potentially devastating. GM seeds contain gene sequences specifically engineered to decrease a plant's vulnerability to insects. Unfortunately, the repercussions of this deliberate toxicity to pests are virtually unknown. In addition, giant corporations such as Monsanto (coincidentally, a major manufacturer of Agent Orange in the 1960's) own patents to the seeds, and often force farmers to sign a pledge that makes seed replanting illegal, thus ensuring return customers every season. This presents an economic impossibility for small farmers, enabling corporate agriculture to triumph again.

The existing proposals will also force countries to accept any agricultural imports, effectively breaking down barriers for large agribusinesses. As cheaper agricultural products flood their local markets, small family farms (in many countries, a primary form of subsistence for indigenous populations) are suddenly unable to compete. Forced off their land by economic necessity, and often actual displacement as governments award land rights to multinational corporations, many people face factory work as the only option.

FTAA seeks to extend Intellectual Property Rights, the rules which protect corporate patents, allowing a company with marketing rights in a particular country, to maintain an exclusive patent for the entire region. These laws enable pharmaceutical companies, for instance, to charge inflated prices for drugs, while blocking the manufacture of generic versions. In Brazil, where the government has sponsored an effective program to provide free AIDS drugs, FTAA will ban the essential generic medicines. Millions of people, unable to afford the costly brand name alternatives, will no longer have the option of treatment. Hear more about impacts on health.

While borders remain wide open to goods and services, people are not allotted similar privileges. The maintenance of a cheap workforce requires a "captive audience", as laborers with the option to migrate would likely seek out better conditions. Thus, FTAA will inevitably lead to further militarization of borders and a vicious crack-down on immigration. Hear more about the militarization of the border.

FTAA's lack of enforceable labor protections guarantees that workers throughout the hemisphere will suffer decreased wages and a decline in working conditions. Corporations will shuttle around their factories, relocating to countries that offer the lowest wages and weakest unions. Under the NAFTA, nearly 400,000 jobs were lost and remployed workers earn an average of 77% of their previous wages. To ensure the lowest operating expenses in their Mexican maquiladoras, employers routinely engage in violent union busting. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the United Electrical Workers Union have both passed resolutions condemning FTAA, citing NAFTA's negative impact. Hear more about globalization's impact on workers and African-American communities. Read about Mexican workers taking their fight for unionization to corporate headquarters in the US.

Modeled after NAFTA's infamous Chapter 11, FTAA will undermine the regulatory power of sovereign nations by permitting corporations to initiate "investor-to-state" lawsuits over any legislation that may impact their profits. For example, a NAFTA tribunal ordered the Mexican government to pay $16.7 million in compensation to the U.S. based Metalclad Corporation, after a Mexican state shut-down the company's toxic waste disposal facility, a contaminant to the local water supply. The ruling found that despite the site's destructive effects, the State Governor's actions (prompted by the concerned local community) had violated the corporation's inalienable "right" to profit. Furthermore, the exorbitant penalty was based on the concept of "regulatory expropriation", whereby a government is responsible for compensating a corporation not only for actual material loss, but for any potential profits that could have been attained in the future. Such rulings foster a system where governments, legally accountable to corporations, allow business interests to dictate the shape of any future legislation. Hear more about environmental impacts of FTAA.

With its expanded scope of negotiable areas, FTAA will impact most every aspect our lives, including workers' rights, agriculture, healthcare, immigration, education, and the prison industrial complex. The proposed agreement embodies the neoliberal principles that have guided "globalization", allowing market forces to dictate every interaction. Service sectors, such as schools, medical care, postal delivery, prisons, and water supplies will necessarily become fair game for privatization. Read an ecological economist's account of "free trade." Hear about globalization's impact on Haiti.