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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.
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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.
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
When extinction became an issue civilised nations agreed to stop whaling.
The exceptions are for indigenous populations like those living in polar regions and some scientific work.
As a result in the short term whales are no longer threatened by extinction but in the long term they still face threats.
Japan's excuse would be laughable if it weren't for the fact when all previous whaling nations would do the same the problem of extinction would surface again.
Where a great nation shows child-like behaviour.
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"Eat this and you, too, can look like a whale!"
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Not true. Both Japan and Iceland catch Fin Whales which are classified as 'Endangered'
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
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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
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.
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
Oh dear, have I accidentally set my time machine 10000 years too far into the past? I was supposed to end up in 2013.
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?
I'm thinking of converting my Hummer to run on whale oil.
According to this, contemporary sperm whale oil production peaked at almost 39 barrels/whale in 1952. At current US daily consumption of ~19 million barrels(and assuming that whale squeezin's are equivalent to inorganic oils), a mere ~488,000 whales per day could entirely eliminate our wasteful demand for oil!
That would exhaust the estimated pre-hunting wild population in about two days; but I'm sure that bold advances in aquaculture will step in to fill the gap.
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".
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You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The "corporations" are not greedy. Saying they are is like saying guns kill people. The PEOPLE that run the corporations are responsible. Furthermore, their actions are entirely legal under Japanese law - laws set by their elected government.
It's really no different that that old "beef, it's what's for dinner!" ad campaign. Running an ad campaign is simply an effort to sell their product and maintain cash flow so everyone working for the corporation still has a job. The part you seem not to grasp is that if they go broke, they can't simply tax rich people for more money like a socialist government. Run out of money and everyone is out of a job.
In the end, if the Japanese decide they don't like whaling it they can vote for representatives who can change the laws. In the meantime it's simple supply and demand. Economic forces are what will ultimately stop whaling, not a bunch of whining hippies.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
Simplistic view, sorry. In most corporations and in 1005 of large and very large ones, the corporate charters, the whole structure of corporate governance, from the board down to the lowliest HR intern, everything is geared towards the goals of corporate survival, growth and profit (in this order of priorities). To say that any one individual can do more than nuance the actions of such organizations is to miss the entire point of their existence.