Good luck convincing the rest of the New Zealand public of your moral arguments, not to mention the peoples of nations around the world where cetaceans are consumed as food.

The reason I am not using the conservation argument is because I don’t agree with it. And I prefer to remain intellectually honest. Conservationists oppose whaling because they consider the whales to be endangered. The implication is that if the whales were not endangered then it would be okay.

Well it is not okay to torture and kill sentient beings for trivial purposes, whether it is whales for blubber, cows for meat or humans for oil. And the conservationists’ arguments are not even consistant from a conservation point of view. The clearing of all our lowland kahikatea forests for meat has done more damage to the environment and endangered more species than whaling, not to mention climate change caused by cow flatulence and damage to streams by intensive dairy farms.

Like you I have lived in Japan, and I have a great deal of respect for the Japanese. But what they are doing to the shales is quite simply wrong, just as what New Zealanders are doing to cows, sheep, chickens and pigs is wrong. It has nothing to do with racism or the Japanese war crimes, which are probably no better or worse than those of any imperial power, including my own country of birth.

More on DNA

Japan does have a DNA database or ‘register’ but they will not
let anyone else have access to it [thats not surprising!], so it utility for observation and inspection is questionable. It is very unlikely it has ‘everything’.

Another of David’s favourite straw men. There is no comparison between privately owned domesticated animals and protected wild species hunted in international waters.

I note that you are making reference to primary school… do you think it makes your argument look stronger, or weaker? Just something for you to think about…

I don’t think it’s at all logical for the whalers to stop whaling while the anti-whaling cow killers keep exporting their beef products to them. I don’t think the whalers would see any logic in that either.

You have to accept that the reality is we live in a world where the people arguing about this issue generally don’t have problems with animals being killed for human food. I know you want to argue about ethics, but the whaling debate really isn’t the place… you are arguing against whalers while lots of the people arguing on your side do not agree with your arguments… But you know that already.

I understand. It must be hell frustrating. Perhaps you should at least argue for the sake of conservation, and once we’ve won that battle then try moving on to your ethical thing. It’s easier to walk up the stairs one step at a time rather than go up in leaps and bounds.

That’s exactly the media report I was thinking of, thanks.

“This is the first case where we would have persuasive evidence”

2004 was the first case? Anyway…

But what was persuasive about it? I searched through the IWC’s report from 2004, but can’t find any reference to this allegation anywhere - it’s almost as if it were … dismissed? Can you help me find out more about this research Dave, and whether the scientific community took it seriously?

And most of us recognised the folly of that argument at primary school.

DNA-tested whale meat from the Japanese retail market matches the signature of the sei whale’s southern hemisphere stock, according to geneticist Scott Baker.

Sei whales have been protected globally from commercial whaling since about 1980. The only whaling fleet to operate in the southern hemisphere since then is Japan’s “research” fleet.

But Professor Baker, associate professor of population genetics and evolution at the University of Auckland, said the data could not implicate the Japanese fleet.

“It is more likely that somebody has taken sei whales illegally and they have made their way into Japan. What it shows us is that the Japanese market is permeable to products of suspicious origin,” he said.

Professor Baker has been studying the DNA of whale meat in Japanese shops for 10 years. He presented evidence of the sei catch to the International Whaling Commission in a paper released yesterday.

He said the commission’s meeting in Sorrento, Italy, was also told that Japan planned to increase its “scientific” kill in the North Pacific, doubling the number of sei whales it caught to 100, in addition to the 220 minke whales, 50 bryde’s whales and 10 sperm whales now targeted.

Numbers of the sei, a swift temperate and tropical waters whale, are thought to have been cut by about 75 per cent to 25,000 in the commercial hunt. The sei is protected in Australian waters, where it is listed as vulnerable.
The last known commercial hunt for sei whales was in waters off Chile and Peru in 1981.

Professor Baker said his group found sei meat in Japan from 1998 to 2002, but he was only recently able to compare DNA reference sequences with three separate global stocks of the species.

“This is the first case where we would have persuasive evidence from the DNA record of illegal whaling in the southern hemisphere,” he said. “The research has also found meat on sale in Japan from humpback and fin whales, as well as dolphins.” See:

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/19/1090089101723.html

I see. In recent times (since around 2000 or 2001, I think) the authorities have worked with TRAFFIC’s Japan branch on that issue, and they’ve implemented a DNA database of whale meat sources which covers all meat obtained through the scientific research programmes, and I believe that all meat sourced from “by-catch” or strandings that is put on the market must have a DNA sample provided as well. There are some species for which this isn’t allowed, such as the Blue whale, but for more common species it is also legal.
I think the only source of whale meat that is not yet included in the database is that from imports that remains in stockpiles, although the amount of this must be extremely small to non-existant now.

Do you know of any recent reports of market surveys showing whales from within protected areas and species, that also passed scrutiny at the IWC Scientific Committee meetings? I heard of one report from as recently as 2004, but couldn’t find any reference to it anyway other than in the media.