For Immediate Release Contact: United States: Adam Roberts, 703-836-4300
Cancun: Ben White, 52-998-939-0183

DOLPHINS MARCH IN THE STREETS OF CANCUN
Demonstrators Demand Fairness to Animals by WTO

WASHINGTON, DC (September 9, 2003)  Demonstrators from across the globe again will take to the streets in dolphin costumes on the opening day of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Fifth Ministerial Meeting in Cancun, Mexico, September 10, demanding unequivocally that the WTO negotiations embrace protection of wildlife and the humane treatment of animals.  Dolphins are the symbolic poster-child of free trade run amok, as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the WTO’s predecessor, twice ruled against the United States’ wise law preventing dolphin-deadly tuna from entering the US market. 

“Ministers attending the 1999 Seattle WTO meeting were met by hundreds of citizens dressed as sea turtles to protest WTO decisions against laws designed to protect these highly endangered marine creatures,” said AWI’s Ben White, coordinator of the massive dolphin demonstration. “Like sea turtles, dolphins represent the oppressiveness of the current global trade regime, where laws to prevent the importation of dolphin deadly tuna are at constant risk of foreign challenge.”

Put simply, AWI advocates inclusion of animal welfare and endangered species protection in all trade negotiations, recommends that no country be empowered to challenge another nations’ animal protection laws, and urges countries never to weaken laws enacted to protect animals despite the mandates of trade agreements. 

“American animal protection laws have been enacted historically with the overwhelming support of the American public,” noted AWI Senior Research Associate, Adam Roberts.  “Unelected, unaccountable trade bureaucrats in Geneva should not be empowered to demand changes to our sovereign national decisions.”

A specific focus of the Cancun negotiations is agricultural trade.  “We are terribly concerned that the United States Trade Representative will continue working behind the scenes to open up the global market even further for products from barbaric animal factories here in the United States,” said Wendy Swann, AWI’s Research Associate for Farm Animals.  “If the US succeeds, countless pigs, cows, and other livestock with suffer tremendous cruelty by corporate agribusiness, while the US floods the global market with cheap meat, undercutting the ability of local family farmers to subsist.”  Instead, AWI supports including animal welfare under the protected “greenbox” subsidies, which are protected from WTO pressure.

For additional information, please see:  http://awionline.org/freetrade/

Editor’s Notes:
  • Under the rules of the WTO and the NAFTA, member states cannot control the traffic of any commodity based solely on the way it is created—what is referred to as “process and production methods.” Essentially, nations should not discriminate against “like products.”
  • The most famous (perhaps infamous) case concerning animals is related to canned tuna fish. In an effort to protect dramatically declining populations of dolphins, the United States prohibited importation of tuna that was caught using nets that are cruelly set on dolphins. A number of countries in Latin America objected to this import ban. They argued that a can of tuna is a can of tuna, regardless of the “process” by which the tuna was obtained. In the world of the GATT, the NAFTA, and the WTO, it doesn’t matter that one can contains tuna caught by harassing and killing dolphins, while another involved no harm to dolphins. The final product—the canned tuna—is the same.
  • The tuna-dolphin dispute, though the defining case of the impact of free trade agreements on animals is not the only example. The European Union has been undermined in its efforts to prohibit the import of furs from animals who were caught using the barbaric steel jaw leghold trap. [A fur is a fur regardless of how the animal was treated.] The US had to undergo years of international litigation to defend its policies regarding the importation of shrimp from countries whose shrimp trawlers do not employ Turtle Excluder Devices, which allow highly endangered sea turtles to escape the shrimp nets that would otherwise drown the turtles. [Shrimp is shrimp regardless of the fishing method and its impact on other species.] Meanwhile, the European Union is fighting to maintain its wise ban on importation of beef from cows injected with growth hormones, which are used in American animal factories to increase beef and dairy production. [Meat is meat whether potentially tainted or not by use of these hormones.]
  • In addition to the “like product” issue, these trade agreements promote identical “national treatment.” Under these pacts, it is unacceptable to treat the products of one country different than those of another country. So, if one country engages in a practice that is harmful to animals, nations cannot prohibit the import of products from that country while allowing similar products from other countries that do not engage in the destructive activity.
  • Notably, the WTO incorporates language from the GATT that allows for some exemptions from the trade rules under these agreements. National laws may contravene the WTO, for instance, if they are “necessary to protect human, animal or plant life or health,” or if they relate “to the conservation of exhaustible natural resources….” In order for either of these exemptions to apply, however, the measure in question must not be “applied in a manner which would constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination between countries where the same conditions prevail, or a disguised restriction on international trade.”