September 2, 2004

CITES: there's no caviar ban

GENEVA, Switzerland - An article in the Sept. 1 issue of The New York Times claiming that the United Nations' Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species banned the global trade of some caviars -- including beluga, osetra and sevruga from the Caspian Sea Aug. 31 -- has spurred confusion.

"It is inaccurate," Michael Williams, a spokesperson for CITES based here, told Gourmet News about the Times article. "There is no ban."

The Times article claimed exporting countries were in violation of an international sturgeon conservation agreement and that exporting countries failed to provide an accurate measurement of how much caviar is illegally harvested—hence the reason for the so-called ban.

What is accurate, according to CITES' Sept. 3 statement, is "none of the world's sturgeon range states has complied fully with the Sturgeon Resolution and, hence, the CITES Secretariat has not published any wild sturgeon quotas for 2004." However, 2003 quotes were not issued until late September, the CITES release stated.

No matter what it is called, conservation groups say CITES has shutdown the caviar trade.

"It is merely a matter of semantics," according to Caviar Emptor, a Washington-based collective of conservation groups including National Resources Defense Council, SeaWeb and Pew Institute for Ocean Science. "CITES has effectively shut down most of the global caviar trade because exporting countries have not complied with a sturgeon conservation rule that went into effect this year. CITES may disagree with the use of the word 'ban' but it is merely a matter of semantics."

Information about CITES sturgeon quotas is posted at www.cites.org/eng/resources/quotas/sturgeon_intro.shtml.

The Sturgeon Resolution's roots date back to 2001, when CITES responded to high levels of poaching and illegal trade by halting the caviar trade by Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan under the Paris Agreement. It gave these countries until the end of that year to conduct a scientific survey of stocks and to start developing a common management plan, according to CITES. The fifth Caspian State, Iran, was not subject to the caviar ban but joined the regional effort.

The Paris Agreement established three deadlines for taking steps that would lead to the resumption of trade. Because the various anti-poaching and other actions specified in the first two deadlines were met, CITES agreed to sturgeon and caviar trade quotas for the Caspian States in 2002 and 2003.

In November 2002, the member governments of CITES developed a list of conservation measures for all of the world's sturgeons.

Roddy Gabel, chief of the division of scientific authority at U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Washington, said the Times article's statement about the ban of U.S. paddlefish roe exports to Japan is also inaccurate.

Following The Times' lead, MSNBC, National Public Radio, Contra Costa (California) Times, International Herald Tribune and Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald reported a CITES ban.