Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-06-09-Speech-4-031"
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"en.20050609.6.4-031"2
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".
Mr President, I should like to congratulate Mr Freitas on his excellent work on this report. As we know, it concerns the 2 billion dollar tuna industry. We all eat tuna and we are all familiar with the wide range of dolphin-friendly labels that appear on tuna cans and jars. These labels have, until now, been unregulated, confusing and often misleading. This initiative seeks to change that. The Freitas report shows why the governments of 15 countries in Latin America and Central America have joined with the EU and the US to support the Agreement on the International Dolphin Conservation Programme (AIDCP).
The eastern Pacific fleet targets large, mature yellow-fin tuna that swim beneath schools of dolphins, sometimes 20 000 strong. If any dolphins are caught in the tuna nets, up to half a dozen hardy fishermen with diving equipment jump into the nets to herd the dolphins to one end, where they jump to safety over the cork lines. Only when the last dolphin has been freed is the net hauled on board. There is no by-catch of any kind associated with this method of tuna fishing.
Trained government observers are on board every tuna boat; vessels are licensed only if they have no record of violations; skippers must be trained and qualified; and by utilising that exhaustive system, dolphin deaths in the eastern Pacific have been dramatically reduced from 350 000 per year in the 1980s to fewer than 1 600 per year at present. Of an estimated population of over 10 million dolphins in the eastern Pacific alone, this is really insignificant. That is why Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund support this fishing method in preference to others where there is a large by-catch.
EU support for the AIDCP label has posed a significant threat to some NGOs, which have hijacked the international tuna industry and become its de facto regulators. One Californian NGO, in particular, has become enormously rich by receiving a payment for every can of tuna carrying its dolphin-friendly label. The fishing method that this NGO supports may well be dolphin-friendly, but it causes the death of tens of thousands of sharks as well as leatherback turtles and even young, immature yellow-fin tuna, which are tossed dead back into the sea.
It is outrageous that this organisation now holds the international tuna industry to ransom, threatening to blacklist on their website any supermarkets that refuse to sell cans of tuna carrying their dolphin-safe labels. Members of this House have even received hostile, threatening and aggressive e-mails from the organisation this week. Their days are now numbered. The AIDCP label received unanimous support in the Committee on Fisheries and I believe that it will be supported by the majority of Members of this House today."@en1
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