What is the White List?

The White List (or "clean list") is proposed policy which will extend government and corporate control over the possession, importation and movement of anything that is alive - plants, animals, fungi, microorganisms, everything. Under current law, the government controls or prohibits a limited list of pest species - agricultural weeds, insect pests, dangerous pathogens, etc. Only species known to cause problems are controlled. Under the White List, the government will draw up a limited list of species it deems "safe", which will continue to be legal to possess, move or import. All other species, an estimated 99.75% of the Earth's biota will be considered "guilty until proven innocent", presumed harmful or dangerous, and will be prohibited.

Once in place, only the limited "white list" of government-approved species will be permitted - all other species will be considered contraband, with penalties for possession and mandated extermination. To add a species to the White List, expensive "safety testing" and "risk assessment" will be required for approval. Randy Westbrooks, of the USDA, stated that the testing should be similar to the 30 to 40 million-dollar safety testing required to market a new toxic chemical. To offset the cost of testing, it has been proposed that a new form of life patent be granted, giving sole rights to the entire species and its genome to the corporation paying for the testing (it being unlikely that individuals will be able to afford such testing), and granting complete immunity to the patent holder of the species becomes a pest. This will place over 99% of the natural world off-limits - it is the greatest "theft of the commons" from humanity, and the greatest extension of government and corporate control over the natural world in history. While placing the Earth's living biodiversity into private corporate ownership, it will also create self-perpetuating bureaucratic sinecures - an army of unelected bureaucrats, unanswerable to the public, with the power of life and death over all species. Once federal legislation is in place, the states will soon follow, controlling all movement of native species between states.

The White List/National Weed Strategy will mandate the extermination of all unapproved species. Not only will this include unapproved "foreign" species from outside the U.S., but will inevitably include hundreds of U.S. native species which happen to have moved outside their historic boundaries - many native species with expanding ranges are already being exterminated wherever they are deemed "invaders" by decision-makers. At a prairie restoration in New York 5 species of native trees and shrubs were declared "invaders", cut and burned. In Illinois, a native Solidago was  killed with herbicide; in an Indiana nature preserve native red cedar girdled and burned; at Curtis Prairie, University of Wisconsin, native aspens declared "invaders", girdled and cut; at Dolomite Hill Prairie Restoration in Illinois, 4 native trees and shrubs cleared with brush hogs, herbicide and burning; in California, native red fox declared an "alien predator" and killed; in San Diego County a native Encelia was declared "a threat to genetic and ecosystem integrity" and exterminated. Even the endangered Monterey cypress is killed mere miles from its last remaining wild stands as a "weed tree" and "non-native fire hazard". The propagation and reintroduction of endangered wild plants has been called a "risk to the genetic integrity of wild plant populations" and a threat to "native plant communities".

This is a government seizure of the power to dictate the natural range of every species, and to dictate the exact species composition of all natural areas and every ecosystem in the nation. Private property will not be excluded - even under current law the government has the power to enter private land and destroy pest species. If you are found with an unapproved species on your land, the "infestation" can be declared a public nuisance, exterminated, and you can be billed for the costs of "abatement".

White list proponents have also lobbied for changes to the World Trade Organization rules to further their agenda.