The United Nations on Tuesday lifted a year-old embargo on exports of
most types of caviar from the Caspian Sea, the main source of the
delicacy, despite the fact that stocks are continuing to decline.
Exports of caviar, which can sell for as much as US$9,500 a kilo, were
banned in 2006 because the main producers -- Azerbaijan, Iran,
Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan -- failed to meet requirements, such
as providing stock levels. The U.N. Convention on International Trade in
Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) said it authorised
the sale of nearly 96 tonnes of caviar in 2007, some 15 percent below
the quotas handed out in 2005.
CITES said that the five producer states had agreed amongst themselves
to cut the combined catch quotas for sturgeon, whose eggs make caviar,
by 20 percent from 2005 levels, with some species seeing a fall of over
30 percent.
"Ensuring that sturgeon stocks recover to safe levels will take decades
of careful fisheries management and an unrelenting struggle against
poaching and illegal trade," CITES Secretary-General Willem Wijnstekers
said in a statement.
"The decision taken by CITES last year not to publish caviar quotas has
undoubtedly helped to spur improvements to the monitoring programmes and
scientific assessments," he added.
Industry officials put the illegal trade at around 100 tonnes a year,
roughly the same as the legal market.
A decision on whether to lift a ban on beluga, the most expensive
caviar, was put off for a further month to give producers more time to
provide the needed information on stocks and other issues, CITES said.
Environmentalists estimate that caviar stocks plunged over 90 percent in
the early 1990s because of over-fishing. CITES has been regulating trade
since 2001.
Some 90 percent of the world s caviar comes from the Caspian Sea.
Exports from other areas, such as the Black Sea and Danube River
fisheries and the Heilongjiang/Amur River on the Sino-Russian border
remained barred either at the producers' request or because states have
not yet provide the needed information, CITES said.
(
Planet Ark, 03/01/2007)