Judge Finds Bush Commerce Department Put Politics Over Science in Dolphin Safe

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September 16, 2004 | Back Issues

 

Bush Greenwatch

 

Judge Finds Bush Commerce Department Put Politics Over Science in

" Dolphin Safe " Tuna Actions

 

A federal judge has issued a stinging rebuke to the Bush

administration by ruling that the Commerce Department allowed

politics, not science, to determine whether to relax the " dolphin

safe " label for tuna sold in the U.S.

 

In a harshly worded opinion, San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge

Thelton Henderson last month overturned an earlier Commerce Department

finding that dolphins were not harmed by Mexican tuna boats when they

encircled schools of tuna with purse seine nets.

 

The Commerce finding would have opened the way for the Mexican tuna

industry to sell its catch in the U.S. and label it 'dolphin safe',

despite the killing of thousands of dolphins annually by the fishery.

At the same time, Judge Henderson commended the government's own

scientists, who had argued that purse seine fishing was depleting

dolphin populations.

 

" It appears that while the scientists at [National Marine Fisheries

Service] undertook their research mission extremely seriously, at the

end of the day, intense pressures ... led to a policy driven more by

politics than science, " Henderson wrote. " Indeed the record reflects

an agency that gave short shrift to the conclusions of its own

scientists, dragged its feet on crucial research, and ...ignored the

explicit warning of the appellate court not to invoke 'insufficient

evidence' as a justification for its finding. "

 

In fact, Henderson wrote, " ...this court has never, in its 24 years,

reviewed a record of agency action that contained such a compelling

portrait of political meddling. "

 

" Judge Henderson's ruling exposes the Bush administration's deceit in

ignoring its own scientists...to allow dolphin-deadly tuna back into

the U.S. with a phony label, " said David Phillips, director of the

Earth Island Institute, which brought the lawsuit along with eight

other ogranizations. " Secret court documents proved that the

government knew all along that netting dolphins was jeopardizing their

survival. " [1]

 

The purse seine fishing method is widely used by tuna boats from

Mexico, Venezuela, and Ecuador, which have been lobbying for years to

gain entry to the lucrative U.S. tuna market. In December 2002,

Commerce Department Secretary Donald Evans ruled that conclusive

scientific evidence showing that dolphins were being killed in purse

seine nets was lacking, despite the findings of the Department's own

scientists.

 

Commerce Secretary Evans' claim of insufficient scientific evidence

was undermined by Earth Island's discovery that some 300 government

memos had been withheld from the court record.

 

The memos revealed that U.S. agencies' biologists knew that dolphin

populations were not recovering, due to tuna fishing practices. The

documents also revealed intense pressure from the U.S. Department of

State, Mexico, and other tuna fishing nations to ignore the scientific

evidence. [2]

 

" The Bush administration went to amazing lengths to prevent Earth

Island and the court from obtaining these damaging revelations, " said

Phillips.

 

###

 

SOURCES:

[1] Earth Island press release, Aug. 9, 2004.

[2] Ibid.

 

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