Japanese media mentions mercury in dolphin meat

Slavery was a traditional livelihood for quite a few people, but we stopped doing that because it wasn’t acceptable. (And before anyone starts nitpicking, I mean in the widespread, publicly accepted form. I know there is still underground slavery).

All mammals of all sizes both on land and sea have been and still are hunted on land and sea for sport and for food.

I see no problem with this and obviously those who eat at McDonalds don’t either since they kill cows by the ton every hour to support your habit.

I do have a problem with selling contaminated food to my children and me. I don’t care if its toxic levels of lead or mad cow.

First, regarding the DJP, if it becomes an issue of importance in their international dealings, I’m sure that they would willingly (assuming they make rational rather than nationalistic decisions) bring a halt to commercial whaling activity. From what I can see in their manifesto, the language regarding research whaling is assertive and clear, but the language of the passage on commercial whaling has enough wishy-washy terminology that would allow them to back away from protecting such activities.

The Japanese government has wasted a lot of taxpayer money trying to bride member nations in the IWC to facilitate the return of commercial whaling. Millions has been spent propping up an industry that provides little economic benefit to the country outside of the small towns in question, and does great harm to its image and political capital abroad. Government support for commercial whaling in Japan is equivalent to the building of mega highways in the middle of nowhere, and other wasteful attempts to delay the inevitable regarding contracting rural communities.

The direct impact I was referring to is that citizens outside Japan can take actions based on the information they receive that will ultimately harm Japanese economic and political interests.

There is always an economic repercussion at some level when engaging in certain activities that are unpopular abroad. Even greater, to my mind, is the political repercussions. Japan should be spending its political capital abroad to build stronger trade and security ties in this region. Issues like the whale hunt and Yasukuni undermine such efforts. Potentially important regional security partners in NZ and Oz have so far had a fairly antagonistic relationship with Japan due to the hunt. And if Japan ever one day wants to have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, its going to have to clean up its image and create a squeaky clean PR campaign rather than try to outspend the Chinese lobbying against them.

As for what sort of universal morality is emerging, well, that is a process that is still taking place. The globalization of information is still in it’s early stages. It does seem that relatively recent ideas like animal rights, environmentalism, racial equality and human rights are spreading rapidly and changing the normative ways of thinking among widely disparate cultures.

I should point out here that the voices calling for and end to both the dolphin hunt and whale hunt are not just coming from abroad. There are a number of domestic players in Japan trying to bring both to an end, and I think if the filmmaker did make an attempt to sell this movie to the Japanese public, the exposure of the issue would result in a majority here being in favour of a stop to the hunt.

Although it is easy to present this as an issue of Japanese culture versus outsiders, this issue in fact is more representative of the growing divide between urban and rural viewpoints. I think you would find that most Tokyoites would have similar opinions to those in New York, while those in Mobile, Alabama might be more sympathetic to the Taiji viewpoint.

Regarding the attempt to muddle the issue by introducing the topic of how widely different sources of meat are killed, I am aware how other animals are killed for food. I do not object to the eating of animals for food, but do believe that methods for killing animals should be as humane as is possible. I also believe that animals that are killed for food should have nutritional value.

So far as I know, dolphin meat doesn’t taste good, doesn’t provide much in the way of nutrients, and the Japanese already have a wide assortment of marine life that does a better job of providing taste and nutrients. This also applies to whale meat. Also, even taking into account slaughterhouses and whatnot, the method for hunting dolphins is particularly brutal and inhumane. Compared to what the dolphins go through in the hunt, the cows and others get off easy. And the dolphins go through this torture merely to provide us with crappy meat that might be tainted with heavy amounts of mercury.

Japan’s progress and prosperity have been stuck in neutral for the past two decades, and some hard decisions will have to be made if Japan wishes to be a strong and important nation in the future. I see this issue in the larger context of Japan a) needing to sacrifice its wasteful spending on rural areas in order to focus on areas of greater importance, and b) improving its image abroad as part of a greater effort to build alliances and increase trade.

Finally, I am genuinely curious as to the positives of both the dolphin hunt and the whale hunt. What benefits do they produce? I hear a lot about how “this is our traditional culture and we have always done this”, but that is a defensive statement devoid of a reason to engage in the hunt. The only benefit I can come up with in my mind is that the hunt provides employment to the fishermen of Taiji. And as already stated, I consider such employment to be no different to that of road workers building useless roads here (or the ever present pointless flag wavers on all road crews here). Are there any other benefits to this hunt?