Animal activists savage global trade rules

Date: 28/05/1998

By Mark Turner

ANIMAL rights groups have launched a scathing attack on the global trading system, just as a World Trade Organisation panel prepares to reject US measures to protect endangered sea turtles.

"Animal welfare has been one of the biggest casualties of the WTO agreements," says the Eurogroup for Animal Welfare in a new report entitled Conflict or Concord?.

"A complementary relationship needs to be established in which policies to promote animal welfare, social justice and environmental protection are facilitated rather than obstructed by free and fair trade."

The WTO is expected formally to uphold a complaint early next month against a US ban on imports of shrimps caught in nets without special devices to allow sea turtles to escape. Washington will have 60 days to appeal, with a final judgement expected in October.

When news of the imminent ruling was released on the Internet earlier this month, animal rights groups expressed outrage. They claimed that all parties to the complaint, Pakistan, India, Malaysia and Thailand, supported by the EU, were flouting commitments under the CITES convention on endangered species.

Sea turtles are already on the global critical list, and the World-Wide Fund for Nature warns that the 100,000-150,000 turtles caught annually in nets pose a severe danger to the species' long-term survival.

But in its draft ruling, the WTO panel states that "the issue in dispute was not the urgency of protection of sea turtles". It goes on: "Members are free to set their own environmental objectives [but] are bound to implement these objectives in such as way that is consistent with their WTO obligations."

This is the latest in a long line of cases which have placed trade above animal welfare, according to Eurogroup.

The WTO upheld a similar complaint against the US for banning imports of Mexican tuna not caught in dolphin-friendly nets. It suspended EU rules against leghold traps, and has impeded EU rules on battery hens and cosmetics testing.

A WTO spokesman claimed its rules did allow governments to take measures which protected human, animal and plant health. He added that the WTO encouraged "the use of international standards" such as the CITES convention.

But animal rights experts point out that the US is set to lose the turtle case despite WTO provisions which allow "the natural conservation of exhaustible natural resources".

Report from the Eurogroup for Animal Welfare, 'Conflict or concord?'.