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With Sales Down, Whale Meat Flogged As Source of Strength
beaverdownunder writes "From the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: 'Japan's peak whaling body has launched a new campaign to promote whale meat as a nutritious food that enhances physical strength and reduces fatigue. With about 5,000 tonnes of whale meat sitting unwanted in freezers around Japan, the country's Institute for Cetacean Research has decided to launch a new campaign to promote the by-product of its so-called scientific whaling program. Once popular in school lunches, younger generations of Japanese rarely, if ever, eat whale."
one of the more popular places in Tokyo only charges 5,000 yen(about $50) per person for parties of 2 or more, complete with an all-you-can drink(alcohol, not that soft drink crap they have in the US :P). Doesn't sound very cheap, but there aren't a lot of places you can get an all-you-can-drink with food for less than 5,000 yen. Just FYI, you get fried whale, whale sashimi, whale soup, and some udon noodles for your cash. I actually had it before, not bad.
Monstar L
Their claim for health benefits depends on focusing on Balenine and ignoring the high level of polutions the whale process. "Unfortunatelly" Balenine is also present in Chicken (and humans, but that might need "a lot" of advertizing to convince people...) So the "smart" action would be to really think about how to retrain the people involved into something that is not threatening a specie that is in danger of extinction, and that just might be sentient...
Tests have shown that whale and dolphin meat has enough mercury to be practically toxic waste. Japanese would be crazy to start eating it, especially in large amounts.
And maybe the Australians should start sinking whaling ships that breach Australia's exclusive economic zone or territorial waters to hunt whales illegally against international and local laws.... not that I care about the bloody whales, only that they think they should be exempt from international law.
Do explain which international laws forbid whale hunting the way Japan practices it. It's a completely legal practice according to IWC.
Also kindly cite how Australia's EEZ has any relevance to this case. Be specific - do not cite unsubstantiated claims by interested parties as absolute evidence.
It's not really about whales or their meat. It's about oil and similar resources.
According to international treaties, under certain conditions a country has the right to drill for oil in a certain area if it has traditionally and recently been exploiting the area economically in other ways. This explains a few things about the Japanese whaling programme that would make no sense otherwise. Why they are doing this even though they have no need for the meat, as the article makes clear. But also why they are not making a better effort to disguise the whaling as scientific. Sure, they are arguing before the IWC that it's primarily scientific. But sooner or later they will have to argue before a different body that it's primarily economic, and has always been so. The more obviously economic the programme is, the better it is for their purpose, so long as they can get away with it before the IWC.
No no, thats what started this shit in the first place. By the end of world war 2, they had completely stopped whaling, but MacAurther told them to start again to 'revive their economy' and 'provide food' during reconstruction. We literally encouraged the establishment of Whale meat as a nation-wide food, where before it had pretty well been abandoned.
the reason they won't back down on it now is Japan is pretty tired of the west telling it what to do.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
This has nothing to do with fishing stocks. For a start, whales are mammals, not fish. The whale watching industry in Australia is worth more than 31 million dollars a year, worlwide the value is in billions.
The humpback whales now travelling up the East Coast of Australia once numbered 500 and now, due to the whaling ban now number over 18,000.
Do you think that the humpbacks would come anywhere near a boat if the Japanese whalers once again start harpooning them as they've been planning to do? You'd see a multi-billion dollar industry destroyed.
Actually, Australian fisheries are in a far better condition than many around the world. They do especially well when compared to Japanese fisheries, if there are any left.
The funny thing is that whaling is a western thing but post WW2 the Japanese were encouraged to start whaling to augment their diet. And it sorta stuck. When the article claims "once popular in school meals" what they really mean is: once the only meat in school meals. It is like claiming "levertraan" (fishoil) was popular in Holland... it was given to lots of kids to boost their vitamin intake but it sure as hell wasn't popular.
Whaling in Japan is mostly an issue that most don't care about but for a small group it has become an identity issue. It is the same group who claim mass child rape was essential to the Japanese psyche during WW2. (See Yokohama's mayor recent claims). To most Japanese it is an embarrassment but they have trouble not getting accused of being non-japanese the same as everyone has when they are confronting those wrapping themselves in their nations flag.
You might as well post about the NRA and their antics and ask Americans how they feel about it. You get the same kind of "oh gosh, I am embarrassed but they are waving my flag so if I attack them I am a traitor".
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"There have been allegations that endangered whales have been killed by the Japanese whaling industry, which is obviously reprehensible."
It's not just simply allegation, some of the more endangered species are on their annual catch list.
"I am vegetarian, so I am not faced with cognitive dissonance about the situation, but I don't care which animals that other people eat if it isn't actively promoting extinction of a species."
It's not cognitive dissonance, there's sound scientific reasoning behind it all.
Whales feed on things like krill, and if you lower the whale population, the population of the likes of krill increase. When the population of krill increases the population of phytoplankton decreases, when the population of phytoplankton decreases some fish stock lose their breeding and feeding grounds and the population of fish can decline and so on and so forth - you get the idea.
We can't say well, humpbacks are overpopulated so let's just start killing them now, because the fact is the likes of humpbacks are overpopulated because they've been able to thrive on the excess of krill leftover from the depleted populations of the likes of blue whales and so forth but as blues increase in population they will start to take back their fair share and the population of humpbacks will decline back to more natural levels. Ultimately the balance of populations has been decided by evolution in that the more successful a species the greater a share of the shared food source it can devour and the natural balance of populations will be based on that - if humans leave an ecosystem alone the populations will eventually return to their natural state, but it's a long process and certainly doesn't happen overnight.
Enter humans into the equation and if we decrease the population of a successful species like blue whales the population of the likes of humpbacks increase. The problem is that what you're now advocating is that well, there's plenty of humpbacks now the blue whales are depleted so let's deplete them too, and that's not a problem if you do this sustainably such that the amount of humpbacks you remove is equivalent to the relative growth in blue whales as their population recovers but that's not what the Japanese want, they now want to start hunting the likes of humpback as fast as blues were hunted so that the net result is an overall reduction in the amount of krill eating species and such.
This is the fundamental problem, it's about ensuring there is a net amount of, I guess you could call it whale biomass, to keep things like krill at safe levels. The fact is that yes, whilst the likes of humpbacks and minke are at above natural population levels had we not hunted other species to the point of extinction that that's still necessary to maintain balance in the relevant ecosystems. Or to put it succinctly, we need the increased minke/humpback etc. populations to fulfil the role of the decreased populations of other whales.
Japan is just scared that if it just gives it up and admits it was wrong on this issue that it'll look weak and that the Chinese will start taking islands off them expecting them to relent on that sort of thing too. They'd be better off doing their population that has no interest in this meat a favour and give it up, saving their country millions that they could put towards sorting their otherwise fucked up economy out because the government subsidises the whaling industry in almost it's entirety. There's no economic benefit, there's no cultural benefit (the people have already stopped eating it), and there's no environmental benefit, it's entirely a pathetically poor political decision that, if not kept in check by the rest of the world genuinely puts many large fish stocks at risk than they already are currently due to the knock on effects.
It's only 'legal practice' because Japan outright ignores the moratorium the other countries in the IWC agreed upon. Basically, Japan just says "We don't want to join your club so we don't have to follow its rules". They also lie, and lie, and lie about how they are hunting whales exclusively 'for research'. I think the fact that they can't sell their (nasty, fatty) whale meat also contradicts their claim that "It's a Japanese tradition and people love it".
Every Japanese person I asked whether they would eat whale said something like "” or "no way, whale is nasty". I think it's time to hang it up for good, ICR. It's also the best way to put an end to functionally-retarded morons like Paul Watson.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Why should humans?
On an ethical level whales demonstrate intelligence and self-awareness at least on par with the great apes, and possibly considerably superior since there's a fair argument to be made that our tests test for "intelligence like ours", which presumably works okay for our not-to-distant cousins in the other great apes, and even monkeys, but whales diverged from our own ancestors *long* before significant intelligence had evolved, and proceeded to evolve an intelligence optimized for a very alien environment.
In addition whales fill an important ecological niche in the most important ecosystem on the planet (if the oceans die the rest of the planet isn't far behind - it provides most of the atmospheric oxygen for starters), and we're doing a very good job of killing the ocean in general and whales in particular - many species of which are still on the brink of extinction, with only between a few hundreds to a few thousands of individuals in existence.
Humans on the other hand are... us? What claim do we have to special treatment other than our our presumed intellectual superiority(or at least tool-making ability) and superior firepower? We're certainly in no danger as a species except via the long-term consequences of our own actions, and we don't fill any particularly sensitive ecological niche that pigs or rats couldn't fill just as easily.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Unfortunately the Japanese fishing industry has a long history of ignoring laws.
There factory ships aren't allowed to operate in American waters, but they do anyhow. Turns out the Coast Guard has to give them 24 hour notice before boarding, and have to find the fish in a non-canned state. Since they can process the fish in just a couple hours, they continue fishing until just a little while before the Coast Guard can board. Despite everyone being able to see what they are doing, the Coast Guard can not legally do anything unless they find the fish after they board.
This isn't just speculation. I've heard plenty of Coast Guard complain about it in the bar. For that matter, I've watched the ships do it. Sometimes you don't even need binoculars or a telescope since they are so close to shore.
I know fishing and whaling are two different fleets, but they are both on the waters and considered 'fishing' by many.