The World Trade Organization's Tuna Dolphin decision

In the latest development in a decades-long trade dispute between Mexico and the US, the World Trade Organization (WTO) Appellate Body recently found that the US' "dolphin safe" labeling program discriminated against Mexican tuna imports in violation of the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade. The dispute concerns the Mexican tuna fleet's use of purse seine nets, which are set on dolphin pods swimming above yellow fin tuna stocks in the Eastern Tropical Pacific, a large oceanic area stretching from California to Chile and west to the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Mexico argued that its exports should be entitled to use the label because its practices are in line with a separate agreement, the Agreement on the International Dolphin Conservation Program. Unique to the Eastern Tropical Pacific, schools of yellowfin tuna tend to be associated with and swim under pods of pantropical, spinner, and common dolphins.