Maltese tuna blocked in Japanese warehouse since 2009

In Japan since 2009 some 800 tonnes of bluefin tuna that was exported from Maltese ranches has been held in warehouses, the value of this tuna is estimated to be€ 8 million. This tuna is actually part of a larger haul of 3,500 tonnes worth € 40 million mostly coming from Malta, that was blocked last year by the Japanese. After talks between the European Union (EU) and Japan, € 32 million worth of tuna was released.

 

The action in Japan, whose sushi market consumes 80 percent of the world’s bluefin tuna, comes as officials in the East Asian industry started to question the excesses of the ranching industry. The figures come from a report drawn up by the International Consortium for Investigative Journalism (ICIJ) who carried out a seven month investigation into the global trade of the prized fish.

According to the Rural Affairs Ministry, who is lobbying the European Commission to resolve the situation, the issue being a question of interpretation about numbers. The ICIJ report, Looting of the seas gives a different interpretation, such as problems the Japanese inspectors found that ranch tuna were flattened at rates that were biologically impossible, and some ranches tried to export more fish than vessels supplied them.

The ICIJ investigation uncovered widespread abuses across the globe, there was no enforcement controls in the bluefin tuna industry before 2008. Some controls have been put in place with the hope of protecting the bluefin tuna industry, regulators of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT) came up with a new paper-based reporting system designed to help them better track the trade and deter the black market.

The ICIJ has found that these regulations are full of holes, rendering any data useless. Read More...