WTO

Hi Delegates!

I’ve been receiving many of your position papers.  Congrats to the ones who finished early!  Just a friendly reminder for the rest of you that the deadline for position papers are coming up; they should be postmarked by this Saturday, March 1st.

Also, hope you are all following the issues of food safety as well as intellectual property closely.  As many of you may know, there has been a problem with beef recently in schools, leading to continued concerns about food safety.  As you read the news, think about these questions: how does an incident like this relate to the world on a larger scale?  With world trade being so integrated, how could this incident mount into a crisis, and how should countries continue to pursue free trade while ensuring the safety of their food?

Just a few thoughts.  Again, feel free to introduce yourself or ask questions, as delegates who post will be noticed.

Good luck wrapping up your papers, and remember to cite your sources in MLA or APA format!

- Cindy

I came across this hilarious, yet a little informative, video on food safety.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=1EkehFkhWf4

I wish I was as talented as those microbes.

Love,
Sohail

Hey guys,

I’m Sohail Khanifar and I’m the Vice-Chair of WTO. I’m supposed to make some sort of lame introduction right here so I guess i’ll give you guys some info about myself.
I don’t really know how to explain myself to you guys, but I guess I’m the sort of person that sleeps through fire alarms and has to be woken up by the firefighters that come through and check each of the rooms. Pretty embarrassing, huh? Its happened twice in the last semester! I discovered that I really don’t like ice cream that much while I was at berkeley. The idea of cold cream just doesn’t seem appealing to me. :-\ I’m in an eurodisco band and you can check us out at www.myspace.com/imnotreallyinaband . Hopefully, you’ll soon find out that I’m really not as lame as i read on text than I am in real life (even though that’s probably the case)

Since I’m introducing Food Safety, I found some pretty interesting sites you guys might want to check out.

This website addresses one of the crises that has been widely covered by the media in the last 5 years. Its pretty comprehensive: http://www.who.int/foodsafety/micro/avian/en/index1.html There are 3 more pages that you might want to check out.

In 2005, the food safety forums were set up for africa. Check out the website: http://www.foodsafetyforum.org/african/index.asp

Some topics you guys might want to look at food quality, preservation, contaminants, labeling (sounds too unimportant but actually really useful), and illnesses.

I will definitely update more regularly as we approach the conference. If you have any questions, and Ireally mean any, feel free to leave a comment or email me at skhanifar@berkeley.edu.

With much anticipation for an awesome committee,
Sohail Khanifar

P.S. I heard a rumor on the streets that the chairs are counting how many comments you make on the blog. I mean, come on, you could at least introduce yourself.

Hi Delegates,

My name is Stephanie Chen and I’ll be your vice chair this March.

A little about myself: I’m on the Club Tennis team and a member of Koinonia Fellowship. I first came to BMUN as a high-school delegate in UNEP and am looking forward to chairing WTO this year.

I hope you’ve all been keeping up with the latest on your topics. To help you get beyond the synopses, here are links to LexisNexis’ Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) site:
http://www.lexisnexis.com/practiceareas/ip/

and International Law updates:
http://www.lexisnexis.com/practiceareas/international/

The sites won’t get all your research done (you should be doing that on your own) but will serve as a basis for learning more about IPR and what’s happening in the WTO.

Good luck writing some quality position papers! Feel free to post on the BMUN WTO blog with relevant comments.

- Stephanie