Federal Court Rejects Attempt to Weaken Dolphin-Safe Label

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A dolphin-safe label will still mean that dolphins weren't killed or harmed for tuna.

In a landmark decision on April 27, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rejected the Department of Commerce's attempt to weaken the definition of the well known and trusted "dolphin-safe" label. Under the agency’s relaxed definition, tuna caught using a method that kills 2,000 to 4,000 dolphins a year could have been labeled and sold as dolphin-safe. 

The HSUS and other groups have been forced to sue the Department of Commerce repeatedly over the agency's decade-long effort to relax dolphin-safe labeling standards. Those standards were established by a 1990 federal law, and the Court's unanimous decision appears to be the final word on the controversy.

"We hope that the Court of Appeals' ruling closes this ugly chapter in which diplomats and politicians, not scientists, were deciding the fate of dolphins," said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States. "This is a win for dolphins in the Eastern Tropical Pacific, and a win for U.S. consumers who can once again trust that the tuna they buy isn't killing or harming dolphins."

Court Finds Science Convincing

The Court of Appeals ruling slammed the administration's conclusion that a particular fishing method (chasing and encircling dolphins with purse-seine nets) was not having an adverse impact on depleted dolphin populations. The Court further concluded that scientific evidence shows a "strong likelihood" that tuna fishing is hurting dolphin populations in the eastern Pacific, and that the agency's contrary conclusion "was improperly influenced by political concerns."  

The Court also took the extraordinary step of denying the government another chance to justify changing the labeling standards, citing the administration's "intransigence'' in failing to follow the law.

Politics Undermines Dolphins

The controversy dates back to 1997, when the administration lifted the U.S. embargo on dolphin-deadly tuna so that Mexico could sell dolphin-deadly tuna in the United States.

Recognizing that American consumers would not purchase tuna without the familiar dolphin-safe label, the Mexican fishing industry pressured the United States to change its definition of "dolphin safe" to permit fishing methods that include the intentional chasing, harassing and encircling dolphins who swim above tuna populations in the eastern Pacific.

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who led the fight against efforts to undermine dolphin protections in Congress, stopped the weaker label from taking effect without scientific review. The Department of Commerce was required to study dolphins until 2002—ensuring that their populations were not harmed—before relaxing the dolphin-safe label.

Lower Court Decision Upheld 

The suit stems from the 2002 decision by the Commerce Department to weaken the definition of the label, despite science showing that the fishing method was hurting depleted dolphin populations. That decision allowed Mexico and other nations that widely employ the dolphin-unsafe fishing methods to sell their tuna products in the United States as "dolphin safe"—as long as on board observers recorded that no dolphins had been seriously injured or killed.

In finding that the agency violated the congressional scientific mandate, the Court of Appeals upheld a 2004 decision by U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson of San Francisco, who then concluded that "... this court has never, in its 24 years, reviewed a record of agency action that contained such a compelling portrait of political meddling,” and that “intense pressures to secure larger policy objectives led to a decision driven more by politics than science."