Whale meat trade leaves conservationists blubbering


	March 8, 2002	atimes.com

Japan

Whale meat trade leaves conservationists blubbering

SYDNEY - In defiance of an international ban on trade in whale products, the government of Japan intends to import Norwegian minke-whale meat beginning as soon as next month.

This commercial trade in whale products is the first in over a decade, raising the fears of conservation groups worldwide, including the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), which said this is Japan's most aggressive move to date to revive the international trade.

Japanese officials said they intend to import up to 100 tons of whale meat once they have obtained permission from Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. This announcement comes just two months before the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), to be held in Shimonoseki, Japan.

"This is absolutely outrageous and must be stopped," said Mick McIntyre, IFAW's Asia-Pacific director. "Japan and Norway have obviously decided to go their own way, and ignore the rest of the international community. That Japan would undertake this prohibited trade on the eve of hosting an IWC meeting is incomprehensible."

There has been no legal trade in minke-whale products from Norway to Japan since 1986 when the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) prohibited international trade. That same year an IWC moratorium on commercial whaling came into effect. Both Norway and Japan showed their opposition to the trade ban by taking reservations on the CITES decision in 1986, and as such are not technically bound by the prohibition. Norway resumed commercial whaling for minke whales in 1993. Since then, Norway has set its own limits for the number of whales taken and catches have increased up to the current catch limit of 674 minke whales set for 2002.

Japan's Fisheries Agency wants to start importing whale meat "as soon as possible" once the Trade Ministry approves its purchase request, agency official Masayuki Komatsu said. "This is a matter of principle," said Komatsu. "Norway says it wants to sell whale meat, and if we say no, it will go against everything we have been saying about [sustainable] whaling."

Komatsu said that the amount of whale meat to be imported is negligible compared to Japan's own haul - under 100 tons a year, against a domestic harvest of 4,000 tons. But the purchase, which would be Japan's first overseas whale meat purchase since 1991, is important because it shows that there is nothing illegal about trade in whale meat between Japan and Norway, he said.

This latest news came in the wake of an announcement last week by Japanese officials that Japan will expand its ongoing whaling program in the North Pacific to include endangered sei whales as well as minke, Bryde's and sperm whales.

"These audacious decisions are a slap in the face of the international community and decades of good-faith efforts to protect and conserve the great whales for future generations. It is time for Norway and Japan to join the rest of the civilized world and abandon plans to return to the dark old days of unregulated industrial whaling and trade in whale meat," McIntyre said.

The Fisheries Agency applied to the Trade Ministry for permission to import whale meat from Norway in December. Since then, about three kilograms of minke whale meat has arrived in Japan for inspection by the Trade Ministry. Ministry spokesman Hitoshi Kiribe said he didn't know when trade officials would reach a decision. But Komatsu said he had reason to believe approval would be forthcoming.

Whale meat commands a much higher price in Japan than in Norway, and there is a much larger market. In recent years, Norwegian whalers have sometimes found it hard to sell their catch on the domestic market. In addition, whale blubber is considered a delicacy in Japan but is not eaten in Norway, which maintains a 400-ton stockpile of blubber in hopes of future trade.

The mass-circulation Asahi newspaper reported that the government wants to increase the supply of whale meat to encourage more young people to eat the traditional Japanese treat. Whale meat was common on school lunch menus until the international ban turned the meat into a pricey delicacy.

(Asia Times Online/Asia Pulse/PRNewswire-AsiaNet)