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Canned! Food Firms Bale Out of Whaling in Face of Global Consumer Protest - the Independent / UK

by Open-Publishing - Wednesday 5 April 2006
3 comments

Conso-Adv Movement International Environment

Published on Wednesday, April 5, 2006 by the Independent / UK
Canned! Food Firms Bale Out of Whaling in Face of Global Consumer Protest
by David McNeill and Michael McCarthy

Japan’s ruthless push for the return of commercial whaling received a significant setback yesterday when pressure from green campaigners forced five big food companies to pull out of supporting the Japanese whaling industry.

The five firms, led by the Japanese seafood giant Nissui and its wholly-owned US frozen foods subsidiary Gortons, said they would divest their one-third share in Japan’s largest operator of whaling ships, Kyodo Senpaku. The firm runs seven of the eight whaling ships in Japan.

The move follows months of campaigning by environmental cyber-activists, who sent thousands of e-mails to the firms demanding they end their support for the industry.

It could not come at a more vital moment, as 2006 is shaping up to be the most critical year for the whale since the international whaling moratorium was brought in 20 years ago. More than 2,000 whales, the highest number for a generation, are being slaughtered annually by the three countries continuing whaling in defiance of world opinion - Japan, Norway and Iceland.

Crucially, this year the pro-whaling nations look likely to achieve their first majority in whaling’s regulatory body, the International Whaling Commission (IWC), following a diplomatic campaign by Japan to get small developing countries to join the IWC and vote in its favour by offering them substantial aid.

Over the past six years, at least 14 nations have been recruited to the IWC as Japan’s supporters. Most of them have no whaling tradition. Some of the newcomers, such as Mongolia and Mali, do not even have a coastline.

A majority was expected at last year’s meeting in South Korea, but one of the new member countries, Gambia, inexplicably failed to turn up. At this year’s meeting in St Kitts and Nevis in the West Indies in June, a pro-whaling majority is more likely to be secured.

A 51 per cent majority will not secure the scrapping of the 1986 moratorium - that needs a majority of 75 per cent - but it will be a huge propaganda coup for the whaling nations, and will enable them to bring in other measures, such as secret voting, which may well bring the crucial majority nearer. In these circumstances, yesterday’s decision by the five firms to withdraw support for Japan’s whaling activities takes on even more significance.

The intensity of the campaign against the five companies drove their whaling connections near the top of search engines when consumers went looking for information about their products. As well as Nissui and Gortons, which is one of America’s largest frozen seafood companies, the companies include the New Zealand food processing firm Sealord and Canada’s Bluewater Seafoods.

"After only a few months of consumer protest, the fragile commercial interest in whaling has collapsed," said Shane Rattenbury of Greenpeace International on the organisation’s website. "Whaling is bad for business."

Nissui denied it had succumbed to pressure and said it was merely transferring shares to "public interest corporations". A notice on its website read: "We are committed to redouble our efforts to promoting sustainable utilisation of whale resources."

Since the worldwide commercial whaling ban, Japan has engaged in what it calls "scientific whaling" despite intense criticism from its political allies and international environmental groups. Japan’s fleet is legally allowed to hunt about 1,000 whales a year for "research purposes" and since the ban it has killed more than 5,000 minke whales. The Japanese whaling industry

recently sparked outrage when it emerged that whale meat was ending up in pet food. Last year, a restaurant chain began selling whale burgers in an attempt to revive interest in a culinary tradition once widely practised, but with just 4 per cent of Japanese consumers eating whale meat, stocks have doubled to 4,800 tons in a decade, according to environmental researchers.

Greenpeace said taking the fight against whaling from the "high seas to the high street" had proved that the consumer could be mobilised for good causes. "This is a gorgeous example of the power of consumers in today’s globalised markets," said Adele Major of Greenpeace International. "We’ve moused them into submission."

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

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Forum posts

  • My fourth grade cass in Hurricane Utah Has been studying whales and cannot understand why whaling is allowed to continue. They wish to become involved in the crusade to stop whaling, but cannot think of ways that 9-10 year olds in the desert of Utah can help! Can you give me some suggestions to pass along to my students.

    Steven Gerber
    Three Falls Elementary
    789 South 700 West
    Hurricane Utah
    84737

    sgerber@tfes.washk12.org

    • Dear Steven,
      Perhaps the best thing you can do in order to educate your class and to teach them tolerence, is first of all, to tell them that there are at least two sides of a coin. You may also teach them that to engage in a crusade against a different way of living is reserved for extremists and fundamentalists. Wasn’t it another of your fellow American citicizens that became engaged in a certain crusade? It may very well be that Americans have a very different notion of crusade, while there is a strong reluctance in other cultures, including Europe, to engage in crusades.

      It might be an idea that you ask your students to look at the issue from the other side? For instance you could give them homework where they should defend whaling, to argue why whaling should not only be allowed to continue, but also to increase. You could ask them to look into the cultural aspects, the economics of whaling, the science, whale abundance estimates, etc. You could ask your students to tell where their food comes from? Do they eat meat? Have they ever considered that the meat comes from what was once a living animal? Do they respect other cultures where such animals could be whales and the food could be whale meat? Do the muslims and Jews engage in a crusade to stop Westerners eating pork? Do the Hindu engage in a crusade to stop Westerners eat beef? I have even heard that some people eat horse meat, and others consider snakes a delicacy. How could they?

      To find out more about whaling, your students can visit www.hna.no, and if they want to see how whaling is conducted, they can have a look on The BBC (a British TV Channel, that is, a European TV channel) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4530415.stm, or a recent article by an American in http://grist.org/news/maindish/2006/04/04/woodard/ , or an account from Australia http://smh.com.au/news/europe/something-fishy/2006/03/30/1143441261279.html or a review of a Canadian book, including a chapter about whaling, at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060318.BKMACA18/TPStory/Entertainment

      Whaling is a good case for a school class. There are so many dimensions, and so much to learn. I wish you good luck!

      Yours sincerely,
      Rune Frovik
      High North Alliance
      www.hna.no

    • Dear Steven,
      Perhaps the best thing you can do in order to educate your class and to teach them tolerence, is first of all, to tell them that there are at least two sides of a coin. You may also teach them that to engage in a crusade against a different way of living is reserved for extremists and fundamentalists. Wasn’t it another of your fellow American citicizens that became engaged in a certain crusade? It may very well be that Americans have a very different notion of crusade, while there is a strong reluctance in other cultures, including Europe, to engage in crusades.

      It might be an idea that you ask your students to look at the issue from the other side? For instance you could give them homework where they should defend whaling, to argue why whaling should not only be allowed to continue, but also to increase. You could ask them to look into the cultural aspects, the economics of whaling, the science, whale abundance estimates, etc. You could ask your students to tell where their food comes from? Do they eat meat? Have they ever considered that the meat comes from what was once a living animal? Do they respect other cultures where such animals could be whales and the food could be whale meat? Do the muslims and Jews engage in a crusade to stop Westerners eating pork? Do the Hindu engage in a crusade to stop Westerners eat beef? I have even heard that some people eat horse meat, and others consider snakes a delicacy. How could they?

      To find out more about whaling, your students can visit www.hna.no, and if they want to see how whaling is conducted, they can have a look on The BBC (a British TV Channel, that is, a European TV channel)
      http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4530415.stm,
      or a recent article by an American in
      http://grist.org/news/maindish/2006/04/04/woodard/ ,
      or an account from Australia
      http://smh.com.au/news/europe/something-fishy/2006/03/30/1143441261279.html
      or a review of a Canadian book, including a chapter about whaling, at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060318.BKMACA18/TPStory/Entertainment

      Whaling is a good case for a school class. There are so many dimensions, and so much to learn. I wish you good luck!

      Yours sincerely,
      Rune Frovik
      High North Alliance
      www.hna.no