Saving Seafood

Delegates gloomy as final fish talks open at WTO

December 2, 2020 — A final round of negotiations at the World Trade Organization on cutting fisheries subsidies opened on Tuesday with some delegates seeing little hope for a deal by a 2020 deadline despite intensifying negotiations.

World leaders committed in 2015 to a series of U.N. targets and one of them mandates the Geneva-based trade watchdog to strike a deal on ending government subsidies worth billions of dollars that contribute to over-fishing.

However, three delegates involved in the closed-door talks said they were not expecting a deal by the end of the year, and one trade source said that discussions on a key area were effectively deadlocked.

“I would be surprised if there is a deal,” said a delegate.

Switzerland’s ambassador Didier Chambovey, who is facilitating talks, told members last week that positions on potential exemptions for developing countries were “entrenched”.

India is one of several countries seeking significant carve-outs, sources say.

Read the full story at Reuters

WTO fishery subsidy negotiations stumble, drag into 2020

December 18, 2019 — The World Trade Organization’s negotiations to phase out fishery subsidies ended inconclusively before the holiday season.

The most recent round of negotiations, held behind closed doors at the WTO’s headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, ended without an agreement once again, after years of efforts. The talks have effectively been ongoing since 2001, but were scheduled to conclude by the end of 2019 to meet the United Nations’ 2020 Sustainable Development Goals.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

CITES lists 18 more shark and ray species

September 6, 2019 — At the 18th Conference of the Parties in Geneva, the 183 parties of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) added 18 species of sharks and rays to the threatened list, “Appendix II.”

As a result of the new listings, international trade in shortfin mako shark, longfin mako shark, 10 species of wedgefish, and six species of giant guitarfish will be banned unless they are proven to be legal and sustainable. The inclusion of these 18 species in Appendix II increases the number of commercially important shark and ray species regulated by CITES to 38.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Another country has banned boiling live lobsters. Some scientists wonder why.

January 16, 2018 — Poached, grilled, or baked with brie.

Served on a roll, or in mac ‘n cheese.

Lobsters may be one of the most popular crustaceans in the culinary arts. But when it comes to killing them, there’s a long and unresolved debate about how to do it humanely, and whether that extra consideration is even necessary.

The Swiss Federal Council issued an order this week banning cooks in Switzerland from placing live lobsters into pots of boiling water — joining a few other jurisdictions that have protections for the decapod crustaceans. Switzerland’s new measure stipulates that beginning March 1, lobsters must be knocked out — either by electric shock or “mechanical destruction” of the brain — before boiling them, according to Swiss public broadcaster RTS.

The announcement reignited a long-running debate: Can lobsters even feel pain?

“They can sense their environment,” said Bob Bayer, executive director of the University of Maine’s Lobster Institute, “but they probably don’t have the ability to process pain.”

Boiling lobsters alive is already illegal in some places, including New Zealand and Reggio Emilia, a city in northern Italy, according to the animal rights group Viva.

A Swiss government spokeswoman said the law there was driven by the animal rights argument.

“There are more animal friendly methods than boiling alive, that can be applied when killing a lobster,” Eva van Beek of the Federal Office of Food Safety and Veterinary Affairs said in an email.

Read the full story at the Washington Post