Bush's 'Dolphin-Safe' Lie
James Chamblee
JOHN BALZAR
America's 'Dolphin-Safe' Lie
Easing regulations on tuna fishing endangers the ocean mammal.
John Balzar
January 5 2003
And now, even dolphins....
Yielding to international pressure, the U.S. government has watered down the
popular grocery labeling program that gave consumers a choice to buy
"dolphin-safe" tuna fish.
Nobody and nothing, it seems, is safe anymore.
Critics have been warning that globalized free trade will mean the
incremental demise of U.S. conservation standards -- and this is proof.
That small but celebrated dolphin-safe logo on cans and packages of tuna in
the supermarket? After a dozen successful years, suddenly we cannot count on
it to mean what it says.
Here's what happened: Just before the close of business on Dec. 31, the Bush
administration changed the definition of what constitutes dolphin-safe
fishing practices. Foreign fishermen are now allowed to chase and encircle
dolphins as a short-cut technique to catching the open-ocean yellowfin tuna
that school beneath them. Previously, fishermen who harassed dolphins or
dropped nets near them were denied the coveted dolphin-safe logo.
The Commerce Department's National Marine Fisheries Service summarily
declared that its change in labeling standards would have "no significant
adverse impact" on dolphins.
Actually, chasing and trapping dolphins in nets has plenty of adverse
consequences. And the government's own scientists said so in a 100-page
report released simultaneously with the announcement. But to reach its
decision, the agency had to ignore these findings, or at least give greater
weight to global political forces, including intense lobbying by the Mexican
government on behalf of its tuna fleet.
"I had to look at the big picture," the agency's assistant administrator,
Bill Hogarth, told me.
As he sees it, the big picture is this: If the U.S. did not buckle to
pressure and loosen the 1990 labeling requirement, foreign tuna fishermen
would simply drop out of the international program that is supposed to
protect dolphins and sell their fish elsewhere.
Hogarth said it was wiser to put some dolphins at risk rather than all of
them. He notes that under the administration's revised labeling standards,
the on-site killing of dolphins will still disqualify a shipment of tuna
from receiving the dolphin-safe label.
Of course, the unseen injury and long-term consequences that occur as
dolphins are encircled in closing nets day after day cannot be measured. But
who cares? The new labels won't account for this.
The discouraging -- and foreboding -- thing about this decision is that it
upends one of the nation's most successful and harmonious conservation
programs for the shabbiest of reasons.
Thousands of schoolchildren wrote poignant letters on behalf of the dolphins
in the 1970s and '80s. Their parents followed up by showing their
willingness to spend a few extra pennies to support more costly fishing
techniques to spare these likable, even lovable, marine mammals. And,
significantly, the U.S. tuna processing industry came to embrace, and then
vigorously promote, the program. Even grocery chains joined in support of
safe tuna.
It is hard to find a better example of the enlightened marriage of
conservation and consumerism. The big dogs in the U.S. industry, Chicken of
the Sea, Bumble Bee and StarKist, all share a policy of selling only
"dolphin-safe" tuna that is truly dolphin-safe.
The pledge was reaffirmed on Jan. 2 by David Burney, executive director of
the U.S. Tuna Foundation.
So why undermine the program?
Because the Mexican tuna industry doesn't want to be told what to do.
Because the Mexican fishing fleet and boats from other Latin American
countries do not want the expense or bother of alternatives -- like
stringing logs on the open sea as a means to mimic the silhouettes of
dolphins and attract tuna. Because they don't want to move to fishing
grounds where dolphins are not found. Because they covet the U.S. market but
need the dolphin-safe logo to win customers. But most of all because these
stubborn old-school fishermen have a powerful ally in the World Trade
Organization, which considers conservation in almost any form to be an
impediment to trade.
So the dolphins will suffer. Spotted dolphin and eastern spinner dolphin
populations are struggling today at only a fraction of their historical
levels in the eastern Pacific. Administration scientists concluded "it is
likely" that the stress of being targeted by tuna fishermen will make things
worse, separating mothers from calves and opening the way for predation by
sharks. Surely more will be killed outright as fishing captains feel free to
give chase and cast their nets around dolphins.
"This is the poster child for the race to the bottom in global environmental
standards," said Mark Palmer of the conservationist Earth Island Institute.
The organization, in an alliance with the Humane Society of the United
States, filed suit in federal court to try to block the labeling change
immediately after it was announced.
Calling herself "mad, so mad," California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer
promised to challenge the decision in Congress. She is the author of the
original dolphin-safe labeling law, and in an interview she warned that "if
I have to, I'm going to organize the kids of the United States. We did it
once before. I'm not going to take this one."
But less than 48 hours after the regulatory announcement, U.S. officials
reported that Mexican tuna was already being shipped across the U.S. border
with the new "dolphin-safe" mislabeling.
In the blink of an eye, the gains of a generation were swept aside in the
grubby name of globalism. It's 2003, time to set your watches backward.