Groups File Lawsuit Calling for Immediate Response to Mexican Seafood Import Ban Petition
Three animal rights groups filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration Dec. 21 in U.S. District Court, seeking an immediate response to a petition requesting a ban on imports of seafood from Mexico caught in nets that they claim harm the habitat of a Mexican native porpoise. Filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Animal Welfare Institute at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the lawsuit claims that U.S. consumers have contributed to the vaquita porpoise’s “precipitous decline” in population by “unwittingly” buying and eating seafood from Mexico’s Upper Gulf of California caught using “vaquita-harmful nets.”
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The groups cited an August 2016 final rule by the National Marine Fisheries Service (see 1608110008) that provides for “emergency rulemaking” to immediately ban fish or fish product imports from a fishery “having or likely to have an immediate and significant adverse impact on a marine mammal stock.” The rule allows NMFS to expedite consideration of import bans in cases where the usual time frame for determining foreign mammal export eligibility could present “unacceptable risks” to an affected species, including cases of very small mammal populations where “any incidental mortality could result in increased risk of extinction,” the complaint notes.
Fewer than 30 vaquita remain on Earth, the groups said. Absent information that shows the fish were caught in accordance with U.S. standards, the U.S. “has a clear duty” to ban imports of those fish and fish products, as the Marine Mammal Protection Act puts the burden on exporting countries to give “reasonable proof” of compliance with U.S. standards, the complaint says. The sole cause of the 95 percent decrease in the population of the vaquita over the last 20 years is “incidental entanglement and drowning in gillnet fishing gear,” the lawsuit says. The porpoise exists only in Mexico’s Gulf of California, and will be extinct “by 2019” if current bycatch trends continue, the complaint says.
The government has yet to respond to the group’s May 18 “emergency petition” requesting that the U.S., through the NMFS and other agencies, immediately ban the import of fish and fish products sourced from “activities in Mexico that harm vaquita in excess of United States standards,” the Dec. 21 complaint says. The Administrative Procedure Act requires that agencies “proceed to conclude” matters presented to them in a reasonable amount of time, the complaint says. The groups are asking the district court to rule the defendants, comprising Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, NMFS Assistant Administrator Chris Oliver, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, “unreasonably delayed and unlawfully withheld” their response to the plaintiffs’ petition. The complaint also petitions the court to rule the defendants must respond “substantively” to the plaintiffs’ petition within 30 days.
A U.S. ban on “lucrative Mexican seafood imports” would pressure Mexico to fully ban gillnets and “strengthen much-needed enforcement,” the Animal Welfare Institute said in a statement. “The fishing industry is driving the vaquita’s extinction -- and pressure on that group to fix their practices may be the most important way to save these porpoises,” Zak Smith, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Marine Mammal Protection Project, said in a statement. “The United States must immediately ban the import of any seafood from Mexico that is contributing to the vaquita’s extinction.” Commerce, NMFS, Treasury and DHS didn’t comment.
Email ITTNews@warren-news.com for a copy of the complaint.