Date: 2004-07-07
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Chairman. I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman. in 1990. in response to more than 100.000 dolphins killed each year by the tuna fishermen. Congress passed legislation that my colleague. Barbara Boxer. and I authored. creating the popular "dolphin safe" label on cans of tuna. For over a decade. this label gave consumers the option to purchase tuna with the confidence that the dolphins were not being chased. netted. and killed along with the tuna. The dolphinsafe label has been a huge success. Since passage of the label. dolphin mortality decreased by 98 percent. to fewer than 2.000 kills each year.. But despite the success of this program. the Bush Commerce Department issued a finding in 2002 that allowed dolphinsafe labels to be placed on tuna harvested through the chase and encirclement method. a manner that kills dolphins. With this shift in policy. the Commerce Department ignored its own scientific information showing the high dolphin mortalities caused by this harvest technique. Indeed. this change completely undeimined the integrity of the dolphinsafe label. � Now. thanks to evidence uncovered by a. lawsuit filed against the change. we .learn that while the Bush administration was weakening the dolphinsafe label. it knew. it knew that observers from the InterAmerican Tropical Tuna Commission on Mexican tunafishing vessels were being bribed to misreport tuna as dolphinsafe. An internal NOAA email states that it "was common knowledge throughout the fleet that the observers were regularly paid off to misreport what happened during the cruise." Yet the Commerce Department argues that these allegations are irrelevant to its decision to relax restrictions on foreigncaught tuna. And the Commerce Department has not provided an explanation for its modification of the scientific data. nor has Commerce taken the steps that we are aware of to address the bribery issues. Meanwhile. the U.S. pays much more for its fair share to the Int erAmerican Tropical Tuna Commission. the body allegedly being bribed to look the other way during dolphin kills. The appropriations bill that we are considering today provides nearly a 40 percent increase for the Tropical Tuna Commission. Yet. the Commerce Department is apparently doing nothing to ensure that the Tropical Tuna Commission is doing its job. Without an investigation into these allegations of bribery. and until the Commerce Department decides what science will guide its decisions. we should not be subsidizing foreign fishing practices that damage the dolphinsafe label. The dolphinsafe label was created at the urging of hundreds of thousands of students from across this country. hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren participated in the process and saw the suggested improvements to protect dolphins enacted into law. What message is this administration sending to those very same children and to the committed scientists at NOAA by cynically undermining the dolphinsafe label and failing to investigate the allegations of bribery by. those who are entrusted to protect the dolphins during the harvest of the tuna. and to make sure that the consumers are aware that. in fact. this is dolphinfree tuna. Mr. Chairman. I am deeply concdrned that we have failed to address these issues while. at the same time. dramatically increasing the funding for the Tropical Tuna Commission.