For 21 years, U.S. consumers have plucked canned tuna from supermarket shelves confident that the product was harvested without harming dolphins, an animal beloved for its intelligence and gregariousness with both humans and fellow sea creatures.
The shelf-stable product is nutritious, affordable and now at the center of a trade dispute between the United States and Mexico over the U.S. policy intended to protect the marine mammals. The World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled in September that the policy hurts Mexico, which argues that it has been essentially shut out of the market for Americans’ second-favorite seafood product.
With an appeal of the ruling likely, a resolution to the matter won’t be coming soon. But for Mexico, it’s been a long wait already.
In 1990, the U.S. Department of Commerce established the Dolphin Safe label at the behest of protesting consumers. The logo not only assures that the fishing vessels didn’t kill dolphins, but also that the animals were never in harm’s way in the process of harvesting tuna; it appears on the vast majority of tuna cans sold in U.S. stores.
U.S. Dolphin Safe policy is intentionally strict and stronger than most international tuna-trade agreements. Canners must submit reports about all the tuna in their facilities each month, including data about dolphin interactions, capture areas, trip dates and quantity. Any vessel with a carrying capacity of more than 400 tons must have an observer on board.
Americans enjoy tuna from all over the world; Mexico is one of those places, although most tuna imported from Mexico is fresh or frozen bluefin or yellowfin — not usually the pre-cooked skipjack or albacore in 3-ounce tins.
The United States’ southern neighbor believes that the Dolphin Safe policy is too restrictive and in 2008 it filed a multi-faceted complaint with the WTO, saying that the regulations are inconsistent, discriminatory and unnecessary. The WTO decided that the U.S. Dolphin Safe policy does not discriminate against Mexico, but that it is overly restrictive to trade. A third-party panel concluded that U.S. dolphin-safe regulations only “partly address the legitimate objectives pursued by the United States” and that Mexico had provided a “less trade-restrictive alternative.”
The ruling appeared to put the Dolphin Safe logo’s future in question and raised the possibility of trade sanctions. An appeal of the ruling is almost a certainty, says a U.S. tuna-harvesting policy expert, who doesn’t expect any changes.
