CHICKEN OF THE SEA?

A DOLPHIN-SAFE TUNA FLAP MAKES THE U.S. SQUIRM

CALL IT THE FLIPPER FLIP-FLOP. A squabble over attempts to amend the Marine Mammal Protection Act is forging some strange alliances even as it opens up a bitter rift in the environmental movement. In the end, it may be business interests--once the villains in the piece but now terrified of a boycott by dolphin-loving consumers--that decide the matter.

At issue are amendments to the 1972 act, which forbade imports of tuna caught using nets to encircle dolphins that for unexplained reasons swim together with tuna in parts of the Pacific. Before the act, this method suffocated as many as 500,000 of...

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