'Dolphin safe' label rule blocked
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge yesterday temporarily blocked the Bush administration from relaxing rules dictating whether cans of tuna can be labeled "dolphin safe," suggesting new labeling rules could lead to more injuries and deaths among dolphins that swim with tuna.
U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson, in issuing a preliminary injunction, wrote that the decision to change the dolphin-safe definition appears to have been influenced more by international-trade policies than scientific evidence.
Allegations in a lawsuit filed by Earth Island Institute, Henderson wrote, "raise a serious question as to the integrity of the (Commerce Secretary Donald Evans') decision-making process."
Although Evans "wisely refrained" from mentioning trade-policy concerns as justification for the new label rules, the judge said there is "little doubt" that he faced pressure from Secretary of State Colin Powell to liberalize the rules, as requested by fishing fleets in Mexico, Venezuela and other Latin American countries.
The National Marine Fisheries Service announced in December it was altering the rules at the request of foreign fishing fleets that said they need the dolphin-safe label to compete in the U.S. market and vowed not to use the label on tuna catches that result in known dolphin deaths.