Ruling due May 22 on lobster imports

OTTAWA — The final report of a special panel studying Canadian objections to a United States ruling on lobster imports will not be released until May 22, Trade Minister John Crosbie said Monday.

The report had been expected Monday, but the five-member panel asked for more time to complete its report.

The panel, made up of three Americans and two Canadians, came down in favor of the United States in its interim report on a U.S. law that blocks the import of lobsters that are less than 3 1/4 inches, as measured from the eye socket to where the tail begins.

Canadian fishermen can legally catch lobsters that are one-sixteenth of an inch smaller, and U.S. lobstermen have complained for years that the smaller, less expensive Canadian product is being sold in American markets.

Those complaints prompted the new law limiting the size of imported lobsters.

The joint U.S.-Canadian panel said such a limit is a valid conservation measure and not merely a trade barrier, as Canada contends.

The ruling could force the industry in the Atlantic provinces to find other markets for the $30 million worth of small lobsters it has been shipping to the United States.

The U.S. industry wants Canada to adopt similar minimum size standards as a conservation measure so that young lobsters off the eastern coast — in U.S. and Canadian waters — could remain in the water long enough to reproduce.