Whale Meat Shipped to Japan May Be Discarded, Greenpeace Says

Stuart Biggs, Bloomberg 27 Aug 08;

Whale meat worth about $1.6 million sitting in warehouses waiting for import into Japan may be thrown away because the importer hasn't applied for a permit, Greenpeace International said.

As much as 80 tonnes of meat from fin whales, an endangered species, and 5 tonnes of minke whale have been in storage for more than two months, Greenpeace said. Under Japanese law, perishable goods can be discarded if they are stored for more than three months without the right permits, the environmental group said.

Australia, the U.S., New Zealand and other countries, along with environmental groups including Greenpeace, are trying to stop all slaughter of whales, setting themselves against Iceland and Norway, the exporters of the meat, and Japan, which has the world's biggest whaling program.

``This pointless import only serves to increase criticism of Japan,'' Wakao Hanaoka, Greenpeace Japan's oceans campaigner, said in the statement. ``The whale meat should be returned to its senders at their own expense.''

Tsuyoshi Iwata, an official of the Far Seas Fisheries division of Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, said the shipment won't be discarded because frozen whale meat can last for about 10 years.

Greenpeace's claims are ``nonsense,'' Iwata said, adding that he didn't know the name of the importer. Greenpeace named the company last month as Tokyo-based Asia Trading Ltd., a company established two weeks before the meat was shipped.

Taste and Texture

There's no listing in the phone directory or on the Internet for Asia Trading.

The fin whale meat was caught in 2006 and put in deep freeze, Kyodo News cited Kristjan Loftsson, chief executive officer of Icelandic whaling company Hvalur, which exported the meat, as saying in June. The meat is in demand in Japan for its taste and texture, Kyodo cited Loftsson as saying.

The meat is valued at about 175 million yen ($1.6 million), based on the market price of 2,060 yen per kilogram of regular grade red whale meat. Fin whales are listed as endangered under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

Japan, Norway and Iceland are the world's biggest whaling nations. While Norway and Iceland hunt commercially, Japan hunts under a license it issues for scientific research, allowed under the terms of the IWC's moratorium on commercial whaling as long as the meat is later consumed.

The U.S., Australia and other countries say the research program is commercial whaling in disguise.

Japan's whaling fleet killed 211 whales out of a quota of 260 in the most recent expedition, which ended last week, according to an official statement, adding to the 60 minke whales killed in the region on an expedition which ended in May.

Japan killed 551 whales out of a planned catch of as many as 1,035 on its most recent expedition to Antarctica, which ended in April after being disrupted by activists from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and Greenpeace.