dolphin-friendly tuna

Next time you pick up a tin of dolphin-friendly tuna in the supermarket, do the environment a favour and put it back.

Protests on this issue led to the establishment of dolphin-friendly tuna labelling but the same problem applies to many other species.

Retailers and producers should make badger-friendly milk and meat available, as they do dolphin-friendly tuna.

If I eat dolphin-friendly tuna but everybody else continues to eat dolphin-unsafe tuna, dolphins remain in trouble.

As many of my colleagues have said, the accurate labelling of dolphin-friendly tuna is important in order to reassure consumers that what they are eating does not damage vulnerable species.

The idea was that carbon labels would let shoppers identify products with the smallest carbon footprints, just as other labels already indicate dolphin-friendly tuna, organic milk or Fairtrade coffee.

It is a gamble largely ignored by wholesalers and consumers: we will buy dolphin-friendly tuna, but we don't demand that our lobster is caught in a way that doesn't harm humans.

One way of stopping this from happening is to buy 'Dolphin-Friendly Tuna', (most brands mark the label "Dolphin Friendly"), where tuna is caught using fishing practises which are designed to avoid catching dolphins.