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."

Comments

May Bel-Shamharoth eat their souls

[bruce_the_loon]

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.

Re:May Bel-Shamharoth eat their souls

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:May Bel-Shamharoth eat their souls

[Anonymous Coward]

The Kappamaki, a whaling research ship, was currently researching the question: How many whales can you catch in one week?
                -- (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)

Re:May Bel-Shamharoth eat their souls

[Luckyo]

They claim they want to prove that whales are numerous enough to again allow for commercial whaling, and that such proof would be impossible to gather without research. Assuming you see whales as just another resource, like fish, this is a reasonable stance to take.

The underlying issue is that many countries want a total moratorium on whaling for cultural reasons. Japan and several other countries with long culture of whaling view this as insanity and see whales as the same as any other nautical resource. In a way they are right, many of modern fish stocks are in much worse condition then many of the whale stocks, but because many of the countries that want total moratorium have severe vested interests in fishing but no whaling, they deflect attention from painful decisions that need to be taken in regards to fishery policy by focusing attention on whaling which is essentially free for them - as they do not have a whaling fleet or culture of whaling.

Re:May Bel-Shamharoth eat their souls

[ZekeSpeak]

they deflect attention from painful decisions that need to be taken in regards to fishery policy by focusing attention on whaling which is essentially free for them - as they do not have a whaling fleet or culture of whaling.

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.

Re:May Bel-Shamharoth eat their souls

[stoploss]

What part of "sitting unwanted in freezers" and "killing whales" is part of your moronic idea of popluation study? Oh! The Bald Eagle is Endangered.... Guess What's For Dinner! Get bent you idiot.

Just an FYI: not all whale species are endangered. You can see some examples here (prepare to give your L type cones a function test):
Humpback whale, Minke whale, Southern Right whale.

As you can see, those species are listed as "Least Concern" by the IUCN, which happens to be the same category that the sewer rat receives. There have been allegations that endangered whales have been killed by the Japanese whaling industry, which is obviously reprehensible.

BTW, there have also been allegations that the "Least Concern" bald eagle (oh, also FYI: it's no longer endangered) have been killed by the Amish chicken farming industry.

I don't really have an opinion on the ethics of whaling "least concern" whale species. I consider that concept similar to the beef industry. Why is killing and eating cow acceptable if killing and eating non-threatened whale species is not? Of course, you will notice that the ethical consideration is orthogonal to the legality consideration.

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.

Re:May Bel-Shamharoth eat their souls

[Ash Vince]

Do explain which international laws forbid whale hunting the way Japan practices it. It's a completely legal practice according to IWC.

Whaling for food is illegal. But Japan has come up with some bullshit excuse that they need to conduct scientific research which is why they need to kill whales, then selling the meat as byproduct just makes good sense.

The problem with this is that there is simply no need to kill so many whales for research it's just that Japan's (ruling) older generation view eating whale as such an essential part of their culture they refuse to contemplate change on this front. You might be able to make an argument that what Japan does it legal, but it is still against the spirit of the treaty.

I also think that the individual ships flout the law because they know their is no appetite to prosecute them back home. I certainly think that the average Japanese whaling ship captain will happily follow his prey into Australian waters then lie about it later if they Australian Navy is not around to stop them.

Finally, later this year or early next year the final word on whether what Japan does is legal or not will come down from the ICJ. That will be final and binding (no appeals allowed) but until then no one really knows either way.

It's actually surprisingly cheap...

[antifoidulus]

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.

Whaling is bad

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

It'll destroy humanity. I learned it in Star Trek 4.

Little known fact about whaling

[Hans Adler]

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.

Re:in my honest opinion

[lxs]

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.