UN Lifts Ban on Exports of Beluga Caviar
Date: 06-Feb-07
Country: SWITZERLAND
The UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) ended a one-year freeze on other exports of the fish-egg delicacy last month despite environmentalists' concerns about falling sturgeon populations.
Producers of beluga caviar -- a luxury food item which can cost up to 600 euros per 100 grams (US$220 per ounce) -- were given another month to provide more information on stocks of beluga sturgeon, which the World Conservation Union regards as under threat.
Caspian neighbours Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan had agreed to a combined export quota of 3,761 kg (8,292 lb) of beluga caviar for 2007, 29 percent lower than in 2005, when the last limit was set, CITES said in a statement.
Willem Wijnstekers, secretary-general of the Geneva-based environmental body, said the "small quota" should help reduce the depletion of sturgeon from the Caspian Sea, the source of more than 90 percent of the world's caviar.
"The Caspian states have stepped up their efforts to control the caviar trade and to release millions of young fish into the sea, but the decline in populations cannot be allowed to continue," he said, urging restaurants, shops, airlines and consumers to buy only from established sources.
Environmentalists estimate that Caspian Sea caviar stocks have plunged more than 90 percent since the late 1970s as a result of overfishing, both legal and illegal.
Besides the Caspian Sea limit, CITES said China and Russia had also agreed to an export limit of 3,237 kg (7,136 lb) of amur sturgeon and 4,232 kg (9,330 lb) of kaluga sturgeon in the Heilongjiang/Amur river.
No quotas for that river, which forms part of the Sino-Russian border, were given for several years because the states did not provide the required information, said David Morgan, head of scientific support at CITES, who called their new disclosure "a positive step."