Whales being hauled aboard a Japanese whaling ship
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Whales being hauled aboard a Japanese whaling ship
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Regular readers of this column will recall that earlier in the year I encouraged people to sign up to petition organised with the International Fund for Animal Welfare calling on countries such as Japan, Norway and Ireland to stop whaling for, in their works "scientific purposes." I laid that petition in Parliament a few weeks ago and thankfully the government has supported the call for an end to lethal scientific whaling.
The reality of this so called scientific research has been ruthlessly exposed by a recent Greenpeace report that used an undercover method to discover the dirty secret of this horrendous trade.
Greenpeace had been contacted by a person involved in the Japanese governments "research whaling" programme who made specific allegations that for decades individuals had been preserving large quantities of whale meat in salt and taking them home themselves and that individual whales were specifically targeted for culling which is against the internationally agreed regulations;
Among the testimony that Greenpeace received were statements that individuals were taking boxes containing at least 20kg of salted whale meat off the ships and some people were taking up to 30 boxes home. It was further claimed that up to 130 crew members were engaged in this activity on one ship alone.
A State of the art transportation system is in place to transport the illegal whale meat onwards from the port. Greenpeace activists engaged in exposing this trade were able to follow 23kg box transported in this way, with the whale meat hidden under overalls, sealed in thick plastic packaging and labelled as containing cardboard. It is expected that the value of this meat alone could be worth as much as 3,000 US dollars.
No doubt the Japanese government will deny all responsibility and knowledge in the hope that they can continue to ignore international condemnation of this cruel execution of one of the world's great natural wonders.
I want to thank all of you who supported my petition and assure readers that I will continue to raise this issue with our government and those engaged in this trade.
You can access Greenpeace's report at www.Greenpeace.org
| Promoted by Paul Foy on behalf of Dave Anderson, both of St Cuthbert's Church Hall, Shibdon Road, Blaydon, NE21 5PT |