Beluga caviar, at US$122 for 28g one of the world's most expensive foods, is to be banned in the US because the fish that produces it is heading for extinction.
Since the US takes 80 percent of the output, the ban offers the first real hope that the beluga sturgeon can be saved. Most of the rest is sold to the EU market, but consumption there is falling because of the enormous price.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), which will enforce the ban after a 90-day consultation by listing it under the US Endangered Species Act, says the beluga are in danger because of illegal fishing and trade, mainly by mafia groups, in the Caspian Sea.
Huso huso, which lives for 100 years and does not spawn until it is 15 or 16, has already "been eliminated" from the Adriatic, the FWS says, is very rare in the Black Sea, and has slumped to 10 percent of its former numbers in the Caspian Sea.
"Loss of habitat in traditional spawning areas, pollution and over-harvest are the major threats to survival of species in the wild.
"However, illegal trade poses the most serious threat to beluga sturgeon conservation," the FWS statement says. Listing the beluga will ban commercial imports, exports, re-exports and interstate trade.
The FWS acted after a campaign called Caviar Emptor took it to court.
The legal trade in beluga is worth US$92 million but the illegal trade is estimated to be US$920 million.
Shannon Crownover of SeaWeb, part of the Caviar Emptor campaign, said that, "In the last 20 years we have practically wiped out this 250 million-year-old species. They cannot reproduce fast enough to sustain the current level of harvesting."
Earlier this year a fishing survey in the Caspian caught only 28 beluga, of which all but four were immature.
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