Whale meat sold at California sushi restaurant
A restaurant in California has been caught serving meat that allegedly came from an endangered species of whale:
Two undercover diners requested whale as part of a $600 “chef’s choice” meal. The women were working with producers of the Oscar-winning documentary, “The Cove,” to videotape the meal.
Court records say they pocketed a sample, and testing confirmed it was Sei whale meat.
An attorney for Typhoon, Gary Lincenberg, says the restaurant accepts responsibility and will agree to pay a fine. If convicted, the company could be fined $200,000.
Yamamoto faces a year in prison and a $100,000 fine, if convicted. His attorney, Mark Byrne, declined to comment.
This case raises many questions. If whale meat is illegal in the United States, how did the restaurant manage to buy some? If one is to assume the meat came from Japan, how did they smuggle it into America? And, perhaps most important of all, if the restaurant went through the trouble of obtaining illegal whale meat, why were they dumb enough to sell it to any person who requested it?
The Japanese chef who prepared the whale meat, Kiyoshiro Yamamoto, is named in just about every article about the whale meat. Oddly enough, none of his bosses at the the Asian restaurant company (Typhoon Restaurants Inc.) that employed him are named. The source of the whale meat remains unknown.
[hat tip to Steve]
Related Link: Here’s a 2-channel thread discussing this news story. Quite a few users are astonished that America has laws banning the sale of any whale meat (including non-endangered whales). Others doubt it would even be possible to smuggle whale meat from Japan into the United States. A couple, perhaps aware of the fact that Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church controls most of the sushi industry in the United States, try to place the blame on that group or on Koreans in general.
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