Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura, news.com.au 15 May 08;
GREENPEACE has accused Japanese whalers of stealing meat from the country's annual research hunt in the Antarctic and selling it on the black market.
The environmental group said it had filed a criminal complaint with the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor's Office against 12 crew members, using a box of meat it obtained as evidence.
Greenpeace said a four-month investigation had found that crew of the Nisshin Maru factory ship had smuggled the meat ashore in bags designated as personal luggage and passed it to traders to be sold illegally.
It said the 12 crew members had sent at least 47 boxes containing a total of about one tonne of the meat, worth some $143,200, through a parcel delivery service after the government-sponsored mission in the Southern Ocean.
The ship's operator, Kyodo Senpaku, said there was a decades-old custom of giving crew members "souvenir'' meat to distribute to neighbours.
But the firm was "worried'' that some wrongdoing may have taken place, a company official said.
"There is suspicion,'' said the official who declined to be named.
There was no immediate reaction from the Government, but the state-backed Institute of Cetacean Research, which commissions the whaling, said that crew members were given meat as a "gift''.
"We distribute small amounts of whale meat to all participant crew members to thank them for working hard. I don't think this is a problem in terms of the law,'' the institute's vice-director, Hajime Ishikawa, told broadcaster NHK.
Japan, which kills whales using a loophole in a 1986 whaling moratorium that allows "lethal research'' on the giant mammals, says that it is monitoring whale numbers, but makes no secret that the meat ends up on dinner tables.
Japan argues that the whale meat, a "by-product'' of the research, should be consumed rather than wasted.
The meat is supposed to go to wholesalers at a price set by the Institute of Cetacean Research, with the proceeds helping to fund the mission.
The whaling fleet returned home in April having caught little more than half of its original target of about 950 whales after a series of high-seas clashes with militant environmentalists.
Greenpeace quoted a former employee of Kyodo Senpaku as saying that nearly all members of the whaling fleet each take 200-300kg of meat, which does not appear in the official figures.
It said it had documented the offloading of smuggled whale meat into a special truck when the Nisshin Maru docked, working from information from former and current employees.
