Tuesday, May 20, 1997
The Facts on the "Flipper" Program
It has come to my attention that the nation's premier anti-environmental Senator, Ted Stevens of Alaska, has recently referred the "Flipper Seal of Approval" on the Senate floor as an example of "profiteering" off of the environment. Considering his record, he may have meant this as a compliment, but in fact "Flipper" is his own worst nightmare - a voluntary "high standards" environmental program that has worked in the marketplace for years.
To understand where "Flipper" fits in the dolphin-saving picture, a little history is in order.
It is important to remember that the "dolphin safe" victory was not legislated until after the fact. It resulted from millions of kids and adults around the nation boycotting tuna until Starkist, the largest firm, announced it would become "dolphin safe".
However, there was no legal definition of the term "dolphin safe" at the time, so other major tuna firms announced the same day that they were ALSO "dolphin safe". While Starkist had actually taken the steps to not kill dolphins, the other two major tuna firms were still actively killing them! A standard was desperately needed.
Filling this gap was Earth Island Institute, which developed a set of strict criteria for "dolphin safety" that became the de facto world standards. And, since standards are meaningless without a mechanism to verify compliance, Earth Island took the enormous step of setting up an independent monitoring program with well-trained inspectors at tuna canneries around the world. For the first time in history, there was a monitoring system in place run by people who cared about dolphins. Earth Island's high credibility meant that its monitoring program helped prevent the collapse of the tuna market in general. This program is still the only one of its kind today, and represents the dolphins' ONLY credible line of defense against tuna industry corruption.
In 1990 the U.S. passed the Dolphin Protection Consumer Information Act, which finally defined a legal meaning for the term "dolphin safe". It was a very good piece of legislation, and made the entire U.S. market "dolphin safe" by very good criteria. In addition, it was specifically worded to allow the existence of even HIGHER standards, such as those of Earth Island and "Flipper".
How are the Earth Island standards higher than those of the DPCIA? Simply, they go farther - both geographically and in "dolphin saving" terms. The tuna market is international, and any program designed to save dolphins must take this realistically into account. Earth Island set its standards on a "company by company" basis, extracting guarantees that no related firms could sell "dolphin deadly" tuna elsewhere. Otherwise, an international firm could sell its "dolphin safe" tuna in the USA while dumping its "dolphin deadly" tuna in other countries, and no dolphins would be saved. Similarly, in nations which don't have a law like the DPCIA, this prevented a firm from selling two "labels" - one dolphin-safe and one dolphin-deadly.
The Earth Island standards, once applied to the USA and Europe, resulted in a huge drop in dolphin kill by lowering the demand for tuna caught by chasing and setting nets around dolphins.
The "Flipper Seal of Approval" is a voluntary certification program run by the nonprofit conservation organization Earthtrust. It is based on the Earth Island Standards and designed to allow the very best tuna firms to be certified to the highest possible standard, and display the trademarked "Flipper" mark in recognition of this.
The Flipper standards are identical to those of EII, with the additional requirement that the tuna firm be actively contributing to dolphin-saving programs, and to sign a binding contract that it will abide by all these standards. (A "Flipper Foundation" has also been set up to disburse voluntary industry contributions - required under Flipper certification - to credible dolphin-saving projects, but no funds have flowed through it to date.)
This has been a wonderful example of the ultimate power of the consumer to control a global environmental threat. The Flipper program is voluntary, as are other accreditation marks (such as the Underwriters Labs "UL" seal for electrical products). Such marks provide a credible way for consumers to identify the highest quality products. In the case of the Flipper program, a mechanism is also provided to pay for the expensive worldwide monitoring of canneries and fisheries, so the government doesn't have to. Having captured up to 60% of the U.S. tuna market, it is a perfect example of private initiative and "kid power" in an era of free trade.
After the DPCIA was passed in late 1990, and all tuna in the USA was "dolphin safe", there was less need to discriminate products, and the number of U.S. firms deciding to participate in the Flipper program declined. Now that foreign nations are mounting a strong campaign to repeal the DPCIA and flood U.S. markets with dolphin-deadly tuna, it will be an attractive option to responsible firms. Except for one thing - Senator Stevens and the dolphin-killers are doing their best to make it illegal to put Flipper on a tuna can.
So who opposes the Flipper Seal of Approval?
Who would oppose an entirely voluntary, publicly popular, and highly successful program which certifies high dolphin-safe standards?
Well, it seems the answer is (a) those who can't meet those high standards, such as the dolphin-netting fishing nations and firms; (b) anti-environmental and "free-trade" legislators; and (c) those with a vested interest in "free trade" at any cost (where "free trade" means the opposite of a "free market").
An example of the first category is the so-called "Fishermen's Coalition". Its director, Teresa Platt, has distributed a number of inaccurate statements. This is apparently not unusual, except that a recent one mentions the Flipper project. (I hear that Ms. Platt is a past winner of the "Wise-User of the Year" award as an anti-environmental activist). In a recent letter to Congress, she describes a "militant" coalition of humane groups which "took money from children and worried the public" about the "Dolphin Death Act". The letter goes on to say: "To add insult to injury, we discovered that a "Flipper Foundation" was receiving "licensing fees" from canneries for a "dolphin safe" certification program to confirm what governments already regulate."
As stated, the Flipper program specifically establishes and helps maintain standards that are far stronger than what the U.S. government regulates, or is even able to regulate. As for it being more militant to save dolphins than to kill them, that's her opinion and she's entitled to it.
That Ms. Platt's members are intimidated by a voluntary program to certify high standards speaks for itself, I would say. (I would guess that manufacturers of shoddy electronic goods might well resent Underwriter's Labs). Nonetheless, such programs exist because consumers want to be informed, and firms with high standards can benefit in the marketplace from making a point of these high standards if they choose to.
Of course the entire nation of Mexico is another example of "low standard" tuna products which do not qualify. They want to kill dolphins but still sell the tuna as dolphin-safe in U.S. markets. I don't suppose there is any real question why they want the Flipper program made illegal and the term "dolphin safe" changed. There are MANY questions about how they could possibly accomplish this in a nation with truth-in-labeling laws.
This brings us to the next category, anti-environmental and pro-trade legislators, for whom Senator Stevens is the poster child. These are the people who just generally favor business over the environment; cutting down old-growth forests, drilling for oil in wildlife reserves, repealing clean-air laws, moving factories to other nations with permissive child-labor laws, etc. These people never did like the DPCIA. These folks, unfortunately, have now been joined by the Clinton/Gore administration on this issue, because their interests coincide: Free Trade with Mexico is a big Administration platform, and sacrificing the dolphins has become acceptable to them in order to achieve the "bigger picture" of Free Trade.
Which brings us to the third category of people who don't like the Flipper program: those with a vested interest in "Free Trade". This includes the government of Mexico, which has challenged strict U.S. dolphin-safe laws through GATT and the World Trade Organization as "trade barriers". These folks would like to sell low-quality products in the USA. To do this, they can raise their quality or have U.S. quality laws repealed. (They're trying the latter approach now since it's cheaper).
This faction is supported on this issue by Greenpeace, and this has caused much confusion to the public. As a founding Director of Greenpeace USA and the creator of the international Greenpeace Dolphin Campaign, I have extensive background with this organization. In fact, the Flipper concept was originally proposed as a Greenpeace program in 1984, at which time dolphin-saving was denounced as a form of Nazi-ism by their Director of Ocean Ecology. (despite the fact that Greenpeace was raising large amounts of money specifically on "dolphin saving" at the time). In my experience, Greenpeace was becoming anti-American and saw dolphins only as fundraising tools even then. Since then, they have acquired powerful constituent groups in Central America, and are now pushing a weak and unworkable international treaty over a strong unilateral U.S. law. This buys them brownie points with VP Gore, in providing him "green cover", and pushes, their "fair trade" agenda for Central America. Since they are concerned only with appearance and not with enforceability, the "dolphin death act" suits them well.
The Flipper Program has existed for more than a decade, complimenting the laws of the USA as well as other nations. There has never been a single verified report of a firm certified under Flipper killing a single dolphin. The charge of "profiteering" is absurd, since all the organizations involved in monitoring, researching and dolphin-saving activities are heavily subsidizing this work, rather than relying on any licensing fees. Earthtrust, Earth Island, and the Flipper Foundation are all registered charities in good standing.
Those opposing the Flipper program, by way of contrast, are seeking to repeal a popular and perfectly functioning U.S. law, make voluntary quality standards illegal on U.S. tuna cans, immediately double the dolphin-kill quota for the international fleet, open the U.S. market to dolphin-deadly tuna, and re-define the term "dolphin-safe" in a blatantly fraudulent fashion..... all to bail out a few irresponsible dolphin-killing nations, which have refused to meet the standards of the DPCIA. It is a sordid story of the sellout of the U.S. consumer to those with vested interests.
And those are the basic facts about the "Flipper Seal of Approval".
Don White
President, EARTHTRUST
Board Member, Flipper Foundation
Creator and Original Director, Greenpeace International Dolphin Campaign