Mexico announced that it will try to revert the recent ruling of the U.S. Federal judge on the ‘Dolphin Safe’ definition for canned tuna, which again prevents the export of Mexican tuna to the United States, in yet another episode of the aged bilateral commercial dispute on the commercialization of the fish.
The outcome of the lawsuit last Thursday was in favor of environmental groups targeted to overturn the decision by the Bush administration to change the definition and therefore ban the entrance of Mexican tuna into the U.S. with the argument that their tuna fishing method implies mistreating and death of dolphins, as they regularly set nets involving dolphins to catch the tuna that swim beneath.
At the beginning of this year, the U.S. decision was to allow Mexican tuna to enter the U.S. under the "dolphin safe" label (safe methods of fishing for dolphins), which lifted the ban set in 1991 to commercialize the product. “The objective of Thursday’s ruling is to postpone the U.S. government’s decision until the litigation is finalized†said Kenneth Smith Branches, chief of the main directorate for Evaluation and Pursuit of the Finance Ministry to the journalists.
End 2002, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced that Mexico’s tuna fishing methods do not have a significant impact on the dolphin population in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean, where the Mexican fishing fleets operate.
Environmentalists have blocked U.S. government’s previous attempts to relax their security standards for dolphins in the tuna fishing. Mexico assures to fulfill the international agreements of marine mammal protection. "We must reunite with the producers and the Finance Secretary representation in Washington to evaluate the various steps to follow", said Smith. "The possibility of appealing the ruling is being evaluated and, with the assistance of the industry’s legal advisors, so is the timing and strategy to followâ€, he added.
For years Mexico and the United States have debated whether or not the fishing methods applied by Mexico represent a danger to dolphins, since they generally swim together with the targeted tuna.
At the beginning of this year, Mexico threatened to plead its case before the World Trade Organization (WTO) if the U.S. Department of Commerce did not scrap what it called a “de facto embargo†on its tuna.
Mexico and the United States are partners, together with Canada, in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which was started up in 1994. 90% of Mexico’s exports are to the United States. These two countries share a borderline of more than 3,000 kilometers.
In 2002 Mexico obtained a production record of 163,000 tons of tuna, according to official data.
Source: Mexican Press