A federal judge will rule within days on whether the Bush administration can loosen standards under which tuna sold in U.S. stores can be labeled "dolphin safe," an environmental group said on Monday.
U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson is considering a preliminary injunction to block a Commerce Department finding that allows tuna caught by fisherman encircling dolphins with nets to bear the label if observers certify none of the mammals were killed or seriously injured in the process.
Mark Palmer, a spokesman for Earth Island Institute, said the injunction would keep in effect a 1990 standard that bars any tuna caught using dolphins as targets from carrying the dolphin-safe label. This designation has proved a critical selling point for many U.S. shoppers.
Fishermen target dolphins because they are often a good indicator of tuna habitats. Under the new rules fisherman would be able to encircle dolphins in speedboats and release them after separating out the tuna. "The judge said he would make a decision on the preliminary injunction in the next couple of days," said Palmer, whose group is a plaintiff in the case. "We are guardedly optimistic."
The latest fight over the tuna labels stems from the Commerce Department's recent announcement that harvesting tuna fish in the Pacific Ocean using a large net does not significantly affect nearby dolphin populations.
It has also prolonged a bitter, politically tinged trade controversy that has frayed U.S.-Mexico commercial relations since 1991.
Mexico and the United States have been at odds over whether Mexican fishing harms dolphins. Last year, Mexico threatened to plead its case before international trade bodies if Washington did not lift what it called a "de facto embargo" on its tuna.
The U.S. government has said dolphins deaths have decreased significantly as the technique of harvesting tuna by encircling the mammals was refined.
Earlier methods of using fishing nets killed hundreds of thousands of dolphins but deaths have dropped to 2,000 per year, according to the government.
This number, however, is still too high for environmentalists who have attacked previous U.S. attempts to relax the dolphin-safe standards for tuna. They also argue the government studies underestimate dolphin deaths and say Washington is caving in under Mexican pressure.
"We are trying to keep the dolphin-label rules strong," said Earth Island Institute attorney Joshua Floum. "Scientific evidence shows setting nets is extremely harmful."
Source: Reuters