What part of “dolphin-safe” does BushCo not understand?

Fortunately, the Ninth Court of Appeals told the Bush Administration that tuna claimed to be “dolphin-safe” in catch has to be empirically verified as to fishing method.

Congress enacted a law in 1990 that said companies could not market tuna as “dolphin-safe” if they caught the fish by purposely surrounding dolphins with the nets.

Worrying they could be shut out of the U.S. tuna market, officials in Latin America have since lobbied for a less stringent rule that would allow the “dolphin-safe” label if observers on the foreign boats had not seen dolphins killed or seriously injured.

The U.S. secretary of commerce has backed the rule change, but the 9th Circuit, reaffirming its 2001 ruling on the issue, said the U.S. effort was not based on proper scientific analysis on the impact to dolphins and was politically influenced. In the ruling, the court deemed the secretary’s findings “arbitrary and capricious.”

That’s not so hard to understand now, is it?