Whale Burgers (Video)

A Reuters video report on a Japanese restaurant owner has introduced a whale burger:

According to the report, young customers like the whale burger. Any readers have opinions on the taste of whale meat?

25 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - February 13, 2007 at 9:57 pm

Categories: Japanese Food Tags:

Rith

Why is the japanese government so bent of making whale meat a larger part of the japanese diet? It must be the agenda of some old politicians that love the taste of whale..
ogre

Hi, I have read your blog for some time, but this is my first post here.

Rith, I have a similar question too, actually. Why are some people so obsessed with whales? You know, this entry is about whale burgers, an amazingly trivial matter to me.
http://www.transpacificradio.com Kenzo

Or some old politicians/business guys who stand to make a lot of money off its sale.
myl

Whale meat does not taste fishy. It definitely has a mammal-variety meat taste.
Kenji

I grew up eating whale meat in Japan. It’s good and I miss it.
Laenir

myl, I hope you said that with the understanding that whales are mammals.
Akira

Still its poor alternative to beef
the overthinker

I’ve had whale sushi. Rather good. Rich, dark meat, like a cross between maguro and beef. Whale was promoted as a cheap alternative to beef after the war, and people of a certain age grew up with it in their school cafeteria lunches for example. There’s a definite element of nostalgia in the issue.
Claytonian

Is everyone insane? And the reporter, supporting the industry by chewing away? Crazy. What a world, where we debate whether or not it’s okay to eat an endangered species.
akatsukifan

Hmm…I find this kinda screwd up.I don’t like this because there aren’t many whales left and know they are all becoming burgers.I love Japanese people and stuff andi it is my dream to live there but this is one thng i don’t like.
Mika

Whale meat is rare in Japan. In fact, the percentage of total frozen marine products in Japan consists of just 0.5% frozen whale meat stocks. So most Japanese don’t eat whale meat. However, it is still an important activity and cultural asset in some rural communities. I don’t see what wrong with whaling is if it is carried out carefully with precise monitoring and tracking of the whale
population.
Claytonian

I’m not so sure that it is rare. I can get it at most izakaiyas, and there is at least one whale-meat restaurant in my town.
Claytonian

must say, I am reminded of this old webcomic, Rush Limbah eats endangered everything: http://www.e-sheep.com/rusheats/06.html
Mika

Claytonian,

Yes, it’s rare. I’m a Japanese and I’ve never seen it in supermarkets. I think most young Japanese have never eaten it.
http://cloneofsnake.wordpress.com/ cloneofsnake

Do you know that overpopulation and our obession in beef is causing much of the deforestation in the Amazon rainforest? Forests are being burned down for beef!!! Eating beef does NOT equal good for the environment! Especially when you’re just eating the good parts of a cow (instead of the whole thing). I believe that a controlled capture of whales is not going to be a problem for the environment. As long as people don’t kill endangered species. Please don’t judge other people with a narrow mind. Read and educate yourself. Try this wiki article on whaling. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling I’ve heard on National Geographic that the majority of whaling was done by the US from the 19th century up to mid 20th century. We killed soooo much that some species started to face extinction. Worse yet, we only needed their fat to make oil for lighting lamps!!! Often times the rest of the whale were thrown back into the sea!!!!
http://tofusando.blogspot.com Akoua Doffou

Claytonian:
That Rush Limbaugh comic was HILARIOUS!
http://surrealu.blogspot.com claytonian

Save the rainforest, kill the whales!
Forgive me for having a narrow mind about erradicating a species. For some reason I get all insensitive about it, and don’t see all the benifits that you do.
Beef, should, in my opinion, be less consumed, and is tangentally related to this issue at best, but anyways whales are part of another ecosystem. Ecosystems and food chains break down if species dissappear.
Now can I see harvesting of non-endangered species of whales working? Possibly, but quite frankly I have little faith in the hunters to correctly identify which water mammal they are killing.
As for talking about how the US used to do whaling and how savage it was, that’s our side’s point! Look how much whaling screwed things up. It matters little what purpose they were killed for, the fact is they are endangered now.

and that other comment about whale meat not being in the supermarkets? Okay, I’ll try to believe you. I even hope you are right about it being rare. But it IS readily available around here.
http://surrealu.blogspot.com claytonian

oh wait I just remembered, I saw canned whale meat at a supermarket, so I guess I can’t believe you after all, Mika.
http://surrealu.blogspot.com claytonian

here’s the proof: http://travellingangus.blogspot.com/2006/06/moby-dick.html
the overthinker

Minke whales, what the Japanese catch most commonly, are one of the more common whale species. One of the problems is that determining population numbers is very hard. Upper estimates of minke are some 760,000, from which the Japanese take a thousand a year. Even without ANY births, that’s theoretically 760 years of whaling before they become extinct. While Japanese whalers may well take more than required for their scientific research, the market is not exactly being flooded with whale meat: I have never seen it in my local Jusco, for example. I have been to a fair few izakaya in my time, and it’s very rare there as well. Whale meat has a vastly higher political impact than culinary….

TBC

The 760,000 minke whale population figure used by the Japanese Whaling industry is in dispute–reevaluation of the data suggests less than half that number is likely in existence due to over-whaling. See Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minke_Whale

Also, DNA testing of samples shown in retail outlets have shown that tSouth Korean harvest of minke whales are much higher than officially reported. See: http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2007/05/17/dna_analysis_suggests_underreported_kills_of_threatened_whales.html

Wait, you say, that’s South Korea, and not Japan. But simple mathematics say that underreporting is also the case in Japan. Take one of the top 4 whale meat processor–Kyokuyo–as an example. It has said that it alone sells over 10 million cans of whale meat per year in Japan. This does not even include tons of frozen whale meat it sells. If you divide 10 million into the “official” “scientific research” figure of 1,000 minke whales killed a year, it means that each 20 foot-long minke whale can yield 10,000 cans of whale meat. How preposterous is this?! Remember, this doesn’t even include frozen cuts of whale meat sold by Kyokuyo or the production by the other 2 leading whale processors–Maruha and Nippon Suisan.

http://www.hsus.org/marine_mammals/marine_mammals_news/kyokuyo_stops_selling_whale.html

It’s obvious from the above that the actual number of whales killed by the Japanese whaling fleet is likely MULTIPLES MORE than the 1,000 it claims for “research purposes.” Unless we can obtain the true figures from Japan, one cannot make the claim that Japanese whale-hunting is “ecologically sustainable.”

Alain

Hi everyone,

I blogged the Whale Burgers video on Neatorama with a link to Japan Probe!

http://www.neatorama.com/2007/02/14/the-whale-burger
al sumrall

Whales are a natural resource and as such, harvesting in a manner that ensures the viability of the resource is the real question. Natural resources are going to be harvested. Unless one is a vegetarian or a vegan, eating the meat of any animal should not provoke comment. One question is that should Japan have a corner on the whale market or should it be shared? Here in the states we eat millions of cattle each year, yet there is no question cattle are an endangered species. We hunt perhaps hundreds of thousands of ducks but there is no shortage of ducks….the reason? Responsible manangement of the resource in order to ensure viability. In the US the big story was not the near eradication of the buffalo but the demise of the passenger pigeon, one of the most prolific birds ever. Even in the 1840′s there was a question if our harvesting of these birds and a commission actually reported there was no danger. Forty years later the pigeons were GONE.
Japan does not own the seas, but neither should we be
not working with Japan to manage the resource in order to ensure the viability of the resource. The seas are no longer a great wilderness where we can harvest what we please. It should be managed appropriately, and “whale huggers” , while they have a place in the dialog, should not be permitted to shout down more reasonable minds. Conversely, nor should the Japanese government be acting in bad faith by violating the spirit of international agreements, then again, the international community has to also act responsibly.
Randi

Since Whales have been shown to be more intelligent and more sensitive than humans, then killing and eating them, is worse than cannibalism! Please think about it!

http://www.japanprobe.com James

Whales have been shown to be more intelligent than humans? Is there a scientific study that proves this?

Whale Burgers (Video)

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