U.S. Bans Beluga Caviar Imports in Effort to Boost Conservation

By Warren Giles
Posted September 29, 2005

Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S., which imports three-fifths of the world's beluga caviar, will ban shipments of the eggs from the Caspian Sea region to protect falling sturgeon stocks.

Legal trade in caviar is worth about $100 million a year, with black market trade worth as much as five times that amount, says CITES, the Geneva-based Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which lists caviar as threatened, rather than close to extinction. Stocks of the fish have declined as much as 30 percent since mid-2004, according to a study published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Sept. 16.

The Bush administration in March gave nations around the Caspian Sea -- Iran, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Russia -- six months to furnish the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service with a coordinated management plan to address over-fishing and poaching of sturgeon or face a halt to trade.

"Time is running out for the beluga and there's no excuse for the free-for-all in the Caspian,'' Shannon Crownover, program manager for Caviar Emptor, a Washington-based conservation body, said in a telephone interview from Turkey. "CITES, European governments, chefs, retailers, consumers, everyone can do more. We hope the ban sends a clear message to governments in the region from their biggest market and offers some temporary relief for the sturgeon.''

Caviar from the beluga sturgeon, which takes 15 years to mature, is considered the rarest and best type of roe. It retails at New York-based Petrossian Inc. for $352 per 1 3/4 ounces, or 50 grams.

The number of beluga sturgeon in the Caspian Sea has plunged 90 percent in the past 20 years, according to Caviar Emptor. The fish has survived since the days of dinosaurs.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Warren Giles in Geneva wgiles@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: September 29, 2005 06:49 EDT