Environmentalists, Judges
p. 22 · Read in the full issue
Dolphin-safe, but what about the extra bits?
By David North
and consumer advocates have made life exciting for the tuna
industry recently.
While both StarKist and Van Camp back only dolphin-safe tuna in Pago Pago, other firms tried to continue to buy tuna caught by purse-seiners working the Eastern Tropical Pacific, where they often catch (and kill) dolphins snared in their big nets * America’s powerful environmental lobby has pushed through legislation saying that the US cannot import tuna from countries whose vessels (like those of Mexico, Venezuela and Vanuatu) con tinue to fish “on dolohin” fDolnhins tinue to hsh on dolphin . (Dolphins swim above schools of tuna m the Eastern Tropical Pacific.) But vessel owners learned they could sell their catch to non-banned nations, such as Italy, Spain, and Japan which, in turn, sold the catch to US firms. The pro-dolphin Earth Island Institute in San Francisco went into the US District Court to fight this, and Judge Thelton E.
Henderson twice ordered that the prac tice of importing yellowfin caught in this manner be halted.
The ruling is beneficial to the two canneries in Pago Pago, which handled only dolphin-safe tuna anyway, and to most of the South Pacific nations. US law ’ b >' forcin S tuna boats out of the Eastern Tropical Pacific, have caused ™ an y to move into the EEZs of nations rther to the West ’ notabl y Pa P ua New 9, ulnea and , the Federated States of Micronesia, thereby increasing the li cence fees paid to those governments.
If the rulings have been good for some P arts of the industry, and bad for others, *c e recent findings of the magazine, Consume, Reports, on the lack of cleanliness m canned tuna sold to Americans, hurts . h business ever yone m me ousmess.
Consumer Reports is a very powerful, • ■ • P , . . n n , mS 1 tution. It accepts no advertising, and uses expensive a oratory testing to examine ar ! eva ua e P ro uc s * evo e lve [ ull P a S es to a dlscusslon of various brands ot canned tuna.
While it assures readers that the crud
found in some tuna cans is not harmful to one’s health (because of the cooking process) Consumer Reports’ copy was not a PP etlsm g : “We sent three samples of each tuna product to a lab that specialises in such testing. Scientists there wash the filth from the fish and examine it under a microscope. About half of the 123 Sam P‘f con ‘ amed thm § s that u should r n * have been there: insect parts, hairs, fish spies, and feather barbules (indigestible bits of feathers that birds swallow when preening and later excrete, apparently when flying around the boats anc j t h e p rocess i n g plants). Extraneous matter turned up in at least one sample G f each brand we tested.” ma „ azine re in earlier years, the magazine re ported, there was a much lower incidence of such stuff in cannec l tuna. n . . . .
Consumer Reports had some advice about buying low-sodium tuna in gen- Jf about too muc h sa lt i n the product, buy water packed tuna and simply rinse it before eating The low-sodium tuna usually costs cons id e rably more than the regular
product. □