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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."
The bastards and their ships need to be pulled down to the deep dark ooze of the abyss where tentacled beasties will toy with their souls for eternity.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
Why didn't the poster just include the last sentence so that the summary is just TFA? Also, I wonder how this is being covered on slashdot.jp.
... rod. Then the whole of Asia will want it.
A campaign promoting the many benefits of child pornography? With about 5000 tonnes of magazines sitting unwanted in warehouses...
Well, duh - Europeans also used to eat whale and now rarely if ever.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
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
"Eat this and you, too, can look like a whale!"
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Nice little bundle of meat to research! Now fuck off out of the souther oceans - not even your "traditional" hunting grounds - and do some research on it before it all rots.
I'm thinking of converting my Hummer to run on whale oil.
Whale meat again,
Don't know where,
don't know when.
But I'll know whale meat again,
some sunnyyyyyyy day!
Smivs on the intertubes!
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...
From whales to sea kittens, eating stuff from the ocean is now completely absurd. I'm sticking with cows.. yummy, yummy dead cow. Surely no one could object to eating a cow! - HEX
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
It'll destroy humanity. I learned it in Star Trek 4.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Trusting the Aussies reporting on whaling is like trusting FOX news reporting on Democrats. The Aussies are flat out against whaling and have no problem telling other countries how they should behave, and spewing BS and harboring pirates (per a US court ruling) when it suits them. It is a complicated mess of international law as to who is technically right, but most of the noise is for pure domestic political reasons. For Japan, it is standing up to the foreigners who want to impose their rules on Japan; for Australia, it is to show that your for conservation, the environment and all that stuff. politics
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.
Laying claim to an EEV in Antarctic waters is in breach of international law. (See ATS article 4.)
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.
we are coming to a point where we can literally grow our foods and we can get our proteins and amino acids from any food source without the process of killing. We really need to encourage these techniques and technologies.
"Buy a kilo of whale meat and get a free tiger penis and bear gall bladder." Snake oil is so 1800's...
Well, not about the historicity, but about how this is going on ahead because "Japan is pretty tired of the west telling it what to do.".
If that were the case, then the whaling industry would not have 5000 tons sitting unwanted and have to start a completely bogus claim about the meat they can't sell, not even as pet food.
Japan themselves have decided that they really don't need to eat whale meat. The consumption is way down. However, the industry making money off this don't want to find out they're buggy whip manufacturers and are refusing to let the rest of Japan tell them they're not wanted any more (or at most, wanted at a very much reduced level).
This is about greedy corporations in Japan, not about Greedy Western Imperialism.
If people aren't interested in eating whale meat, why not just give up on the hunt and stop killing the things?
Continuing to produce a product no-one is interested in (and that large swathes of the rest of the world would rather you didn't produce) seems stupid to me, especially if they have to divert money from tsunami relief to pay for it.
Is it because of lobbying by the whale fishermen? Concerns from the government about where all the people involved in the industry are gonna get jobs if the industry is shut down? National pride? (i.e. "we have been catching whales for decades, why should we stop now just because someone else tells us to") Something else?
Seriously, what does whale meat taste like?
Fish? Lobster?
I don't like rubbery meat.
If they sold it locally I'd try it.
Mod down for racism... But you know I'm right.
If they keep doing that, they'll go blind.
/*Insert boring sig here*/
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.
It's a nationalism thing. Even if no Japanese person would eat a single mouthful of whale, the Japanese nationalists would still want whales hunted solely to stick a finger in the eye of the gaijins.
Maybe Burger King could bring the "Waler" back? McWhale? Wendy's Classic Whale? Hardee's ThickWhale?
Hunting whales is at the very least morally questionable. You know, with them being kinda endangered and all that. Now, one could have argued that it's traditional for Japanese to hunt and eat them, and that tradition plays a big role in their culture, so it's kinda hard to get that out of their system and that's why they need to come up with so many reasons to tiptoe around the whaling bans. Ok. We can understand that. I mean, we kill human beings to protect our way of life, so who are we to judge them for killing whales for it?
But now we get to hear that it's not really the case and the only ones that actually WANT this slaughtering to continue is the whaling industry, not the consumers. That's a bit like... well, imagine everyone in the US suddenly abandoning their gas guzzlers and going hybrid and e-car while at the same time our leaders keep waging wars for the "strategic control" of oil and ... ummmm...
Ok, guess we're all the same, all over the planet.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Continuing to produce a product no-one is interested in (and that large swathes of the rest of the world would rather you didn't produce) seems stupid to me
Maybe they had some RIAA consultants advising?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Pretty much pride. It's not whaling supporters care that much about the tradition of whaling or that anyone in Japan actually likes eating whale, it's that as long as you have foreign countries wagging their fingers at Japan and demanding that they stop, ceasing whaling activity would appear to be bowing to foreign pressure. Most Japanese would like to stop their whaling program on purely practical grounds, but that's not going to happen as long as it would be perceived as conceding the moral argument.
That is positive proof that their despicable activity is not "scientific".
It's because successive Japanese governments have been scared to death that if they give up to the international community on whaling they'll be seen as weak and that nations like China, Russia, and South Korea will be emboldened to go after them over their disputes (such as dispute island ownership).
You also have to look at it from the Japanese mindset, they're a very proud people who really really struggle with admitting fault - this is why a few members of the Japanese government have now said they can't understand why there is uproar when they visit war shrines of World War II Japanese war criminals such as those responsible for the atrocities that occurred during the rape of Nanking and so forth and why there hasn't really been a formal apology for turning women in countries they invaded into sex slaves for their soldiers or compensation for some of the still living victims.
When you realise that there are still large segments of Japanese society including some of those in government who wont accept that Japan did anything wrong with some of or all of the atrocities committed during World War II you're going to have a hard time getting them to admit they were wrong on something like whaling.
I've spend a lot of time in Japan. No one eats whale meat. The industry keeps going because they bribe the boring old farts that run the LDP to prop them up. They couldn't give it away. Those Japanese who did eat it at school lunches when they were kids said it tastes like shit and is like eating gristle. With Japan's economy on the brink not even the corrupt old farts at the LDP can prop up the industry indefinitely so its days are numbered. Get real fucking jobs, parasites.
They need a law to FORCE whale meat onto school children the way we do with milk. /s
Once popular in school lunches, younger generations of Japanese rarely, if ever, eat whale."
It was quite never popular to begin with. It tastes awful to begin with, and kids hated it. My wife (a Japanese citizen) finds it like repugnant rubber. It was pushed by the government as school lunches, so it was predominant at once. But predominant does not mean "popular" as this case demonstrates.
To be honest, I cannot remember once single Japanese person I know that has actually said anything positive about whale hunting or whale meat, not even older people (and they do eat some crazy, weird tasting food, like natto). Obviously this is just personal, anecdotal evidence, but still.
Unfortunately political apathy and disenfranchisement being part of the current Japanese ethos prevent actual democratic challenges to the ossified bureocratic structures and interests groups that still fight and rationalize the archaic practice of dishing rubber-shit-tasting whale meat as part of a daily breakfast :/
There's a lot of truth to SmallFurryCreature's post, but I'd also say that to some extent in Japan whale meat is like McRib is in the USA. This is what I mean by the comparison. Most Americans who I know refuse to eat McRib (it's a heavily processed pork sandwich that McDonald's sells in the USA at random times - most of the time it's unavailable) and consider it to be bad even by McDonald's low standards. I will never forget a co-worker saying "That's disgusting!" when someone else in the office talked about how much they liked to eat it. The people who like McRib are few, but they are hard core addicts. There are websites about the sandwich and they update them when someone reports a restaurant that has it available again. Some people have been known to drive for hundreds of miles to get one. Most people in Japan hate whale meat, but there are some hard core weirdos who love it. They make a lot of noise in Japan. Whales basically get hunted because these weirdos are large enough in number, despite being a minority in the country, that the market responds to their demand by making it available.
For me, its not so much about a whale species being endangered. Its more about the inteligence of the animals, the more inteligent an animal is, the more problem I have with it being killed.
http://nocache-secure.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/whale/n9420/
That's pretty rich, maybe the USDA should start calling themselves the "Scientific Ungulate Research Foundation for Science"
You also have to look at it from the Japanese mindset, they're a very proud people who really really struggle with admitting fault - this is why a few members of the Japanese government have now said they can't understand why there is uproar when they visit war shrines of World War II Japanese war criminals such as those responsible for the atrocities that occurred during the rape of Nanking and so forth and why there hasn't really been a formal apology for turning women in countries they invaded into sex slaves for their soldiers or compensation for some of the still living victims.
If you are talking about Yasukuni Shrine, please note two things... 1. It existed before WWII so it is clearly not a shrine to WWII Japanese war criminals, and 2. The much discussed category of "Class A" war criminals are politicians who launched a war of aggression, like Hideki Tojo, George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard. I agree that these crimes are infamous. However, it's kind of hypocritical to complain about Japanese war criminals who were brought to justice when the west is harbouring ones who have not been called to account.
As for the comfort women issue, the Prime Minister of Japan apologized in 1992 "[Concerning the comfort women,] I apologize from the bottom of my heart and feel remorse for those people who suffered indescribable hardships". Sounds like an apology to me. In fact Japan has formally and comprehensively apologized: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_Japan
I personally think the Japanese government should be providing far more compensation to surviving individuals. I also think that the Australian government should do something about the cover up of mass rapes which occurred when they occupied Japan, and pay compensation to surviving individuals. None of these valid claims are helped by regurgitating misguided media propaganda.
I do wonder if the presence of foreign teachers in Japan for 20 years has contributed to the decline of whale meat consumption among the young. On the J.E.T. program all of us teachers discouraged whaling and eating the meat every chance we got.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
National Geographic had a good article last month on the Norwegian industry
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/06/viking-whalers/
It included a chart showing other countries activities
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/06/viking-whalers/whale-catch-graphic
Which makes it clear that the main concern is Japan's catch of endangered Sei and Fin whales.
"The much discussed category of "Class A" war criminals are politicians who launched a war of aggression, like Hideki Tojo, George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard. I agree that these crimes are infamous. However, it's kind of hypocritical to complain about Japanese war criminals who were brought to justice when the west is harbouring ones who have not been called to account."
I'm as anti-Bush and Blair as they come but did you really just compare someone kill of the death of millions including through concentration camps, extremely sick experiments, who supported kamikaze attacks, and who allowed the rape of hundreds of thousands of women in the same category as them? You just lost all credibility right there.
If you can't even see how much more awful the crime the Japanese leadership are guilty of in the war than anything Bush or Blair did they have literally zero sense of perspective on the issue.
Let me guess, you're Japanese?
Yasukuni shrine not only commemorates the war criminals, but also anyone who died for and against the Empire of Japan. The purpose of the shrine is to rest their souls. You need to understand the Shinto belief before criticising.
The Japanese government has apologised and paid for the comfort women several times already. Some of these living "sex slaves" are claiming that they were forced to have sex with the Japanese soldiers for 7-8 years since 1940. I'm pretty sure the WW II ended in 1945...
3...2...1...
Shiver me timbers! It be a whale joke!
...to nuke Hiroshima again? Stop. Whaling.
As near as I can figure, the Japanese government mostly continues to support the whaling industry out of spite. They keep whaling because other countries try to tell them they aren't allowed to do it.
I am vegan. For perfect health and it works. Good for the animals too, So they can keep thier rotting cadavers for themselfes,
Meat is not food! Meat is death!
Now, Go Fruit Yourself!
Cue the judgmental holier-than-thou jerks to put these jerks in their place by pointing out that their morals are superior to the other side's while not giving them any actual useful advice or information. Because whales are endangered, so emotions are the only thing that matters here.
It was an unreasonable request phrased as a totally rational and reasonable one. It's a simple trap that accomplishes nothing, other than to stroke his ego allowing him to think he "won" something. Forums like these are more successful as a medium for didactic discussion than competitive debate, something that I suspect this poster does not understand or possibly doesn't care to admit.
As to Japanese whaling? I think we can all agree that something fishy is going on.
1. why should the intelligent of an animal matter? sure it is interesting, but if it can be eaten then why not eat it?
2. I totally agree. And I doubt anyone is suggesting hunting whales to extinction. A sustainable whale hunt seems like a reasonable compromise.
3. intelligence, tool making, and superior firepower are just some of the many reasons humans are able to hunt nearly any animal on earth. but it is what it is. If pigs could swim or drive boats I guess they could hunt whales too, except in that case people would defend it as being a part of nature. You shouldn't feel guilty being on top, and I don't really follow how you've managed to get yourself into such a position.
Quite obviously, human beings are not supposed to eat whale meat. Or any other 'meat' for that matter, since, strangely enough, people who slaughter animals all day are evil sociopaths. This would be impossible if human beings were SUPPOSED to eat meat.
My cats aren't evil sociopaths, they aren't mentally ill and screwed up because they enjoy killing mice and birds, but ALL human beings who kill animals on a daily basis are evil scum.
Yes, that includes the muslim scum who kill sheep, etc. during their 'Festival of DEATH', sorry - 'Festival of Eid'.
Quit flogging your meat - you'll go blind.
You Whale Whores!
Flogging the whale meat huh? Flogging dolphins was not enough
Humans are just as natural as anything else.
Therefore the "natural" levels of species' populations are whatever they are. To some extent humans decide this, but we are as subject to the laws of evolution and nature as anything else.
If we are able to adjust our behavior to create a reasonably steady-state balance in nature, then we are well adjusted evolutionarily speaking. If not, well then we will go extinct like any other maladapted species.
Nature will go on, with or without us.
Ironic captcha: pinched
Really, we're to the point of whale porn now?
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/05/28/national/hashimoto-looks-to-deflect-sex-slave-blame/
Allow whaling IF the whalers buy and mount high power lasers capable of melting a hole in a ship to the whales head. They must also train the whales to shoot at any ship that has WHALE SHOOT ME painted on the side. And, you guessed it, they must paint WHALE SHOOT ME as large as possible on both sides of their ships.
So Japanese fisheries have gone to hell in part because of their practice of catching and mutilating jellyfish. Apparently the jellyfish when injured go into reproductive mode and the goo being thrown back into the ocean contains a now fertilized jellyfish eggs. In trying to reduce the population they generate a boom. Que listo!
I am not a "fish" person but I'd like to try it. Do you think whale can be had in the US?
This guy obviously is http://plumpergeddon.tumblr.com/
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
Younger generations of Japanese seem to be refreshingly open-minded, but I can't stand these old farts in power who worship at the altar of tradition. Tradition is all well and good as long as it's not maladaptive, but let's not blindly maintain tradition as an end in itself, mmmkay?
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
If people aren't interested in eating whale meat, why not just give up on the hunt and stop killing the things?
I suspect there must be an established industry around whale meat, and they will to whatever they can to recover lost sales.
Read the judgement of the IMT. Tojo was found guilty of waging a war of aggression and inhumane treatment of prisoners and properly sentenced to death. These are Class A war crimes. I put it to you that invading Iraq (directly leading to the death of hundreds of thousands) and systematic state sponsored torture (rendition) easily meet the criteria of the charges that were brought against Tojo. Therefore Bush, especially, should be tried under the same criteria.
You allege greater that Tojo was guilty of "much more awful crime". Why wasn't he found guilty of such by the IMT? They weren't known for going soft on war criminals. In fact, those who were responsible for crimes against humanity were Class C war criminals. Interestingly, the US chose to harbour known class C Japanese war criminals from the infamous Unit 731 and they were never brought to justice. On the other hand, the Russians tried the ones they captured. Judge Röling of the IMT wrote in 1981: "As one of the judges in the International Military Tribunal, it is a bitter experience for me to be informed now that centrally ordered Japanese war criminality of the most disgusting kind was kept secret from the Court by the U.S. government." Is this the perspective and credibility of which you speak? I regard those responsible for crimes "of the most disgusting kind" to be accessories after the fact.
And if you want concentration camps, how about Gitmo? How hypocritical are you if you can't see what it is?
No I'm not Japanese. But I do study history becuase I am not satisfied by propaganda from any source.
You're still showing absolutely no sense of proportion, if you think the conditions of Guantanamo are even close to that of the Japanese (or German for that matter) concentration camps then no, you don't study history, in fact, you don't know the first thing about it.
I think what George Bush did was criminal, but to compare it to what the Japanese did in World War II is absolutely fucking insane. Even ignoring the concentration camp issue you can't pretend that the hundreds of thousands who died through sectarian violence as an indirect result of the war is the same as the millions who were killed as a direct order of the Japanese leadership - not only is the scale larger but one was an indirect side effect caused by Bush's stupidity and the other was a direct order caused by Japanese malice.
Seriously?
If there is no demand for the stuff, well, I guess it's the law of demand and offer... The cause for the whaling fleet being still active is just that they needed to keep these people at work and there were some vested interests. The ships are far from modern or new and it seems that the market weren't so hot after all. It's kinda fun that a "Tycoon" from Iceland was planning to hunt down 184 whales this year for selling them. Well, I hope he hasn't done yet... or that he is a great fan of the stuff because I can foresee that his menu will be somewhat monotonous in the coming years... another idea would be to recycle the meat for mining purposes: Heavy metals and chemicals may get a good price in the commodity market. BTW: How comes there are "tycoons" in Iceland? They still owe us Dutch half of their country and the other half to the Germans... WTF?
-- 29A the number of the Beast
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
All this talk of meat is making me hungry (or maybe it is the seven cups of coffee.) What does whale meat taste like? How is it prepared? IS it good food, from a taste and nutritional standpoint? After all in some countries they are eating monkey brains, grubs and poop-beetles....so...whale does not sound all that outrageous.
vin
We will be happy when we are the only species on the planet!
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