Green activists take stand over tuna fishing at Brussels expo
BRUSSELS (AFP) — Greenpeace activists stopped five tuna suppliers from selling their wares at a major trade fair in Brussels Wednesday by covering their stands with fishing nets, according to an AFP reporter.
Around a dozen environmental activists also chained up the stands, at the European Seafood Exposition, and unfurled a banner reading: "Don't buy tuna. Time and tuna are running out."
The event is the biggest in Europe in the fishing and seafood sector, attracting some 20,000 buyers and sellers from around 80 countries to the Belgian capital each year.
"The aim was to upset the business of these companies, which have a huge responsibility for tuna overfishing," Greenpeace France representative Stephan Beaucher said.
"The way overfishing is at the moment, we will not be able to avoid the collapse of stocks of tuna species, some of which are close to extinction," he said.
In 2007, European Union nations breached the bloc's bluefin tuna quota of around 4,000 tonnes, with France the main culprit. As a result, tuna fishing was halted for the rest of the year.
Environmentalists warn that tuna could face extinction if fishing continues at current rates to feed a world-wide fad for Japanese food such as sushi.
But tuna fishing is an increasingly lucrative industry, particularly for developing economies that export to Japan, which consumes a quarter of the world's tuna.
