Elizabeth Furse: “Mr. Chairman, I am rising in opposition to H.R. 408. I think this is truly an issue of labeling. The American public…”

“Mr. Chairman, I am rising in opposition to H.R. 408. I think this is truly an issue of labeling. The American public demanded and came to accept the fact that tuna with the tuna safe label was tuna where dolphins were not harmed. H.R. 408 does something that I think we should explain. What H.R. 408 does, it says that you can now harass dolphins, you can separate them from their calves. We do not know if that hurts them. You can move them when they are feeding. We do not know if that hurts them, but the American public thinks that that might be harmful. The American public has come to believe that when we say dolphin safe, we mean it. So this is a question of trust. What H.R. 408 would do is if dolphin were caught in the net, if we went back to that kind of fishing and it was removed while still alive, it would not be counted as a dolphin killed. That is all that H.R. 408 says, is that the dolphin must not be dead. So then they throw this dolphin overboard. How long does it last? We do not know. What I think we have to understand is that this is a situation of pressure. We have an enormous market, as has been pointed out, and foreign fisheries would like to be part of that market. But our American fisheries have lived by the rules of dolphin safe. Our American fisheries have said that they would abide by U.S. law.”