Photo by cfdls.
If you fancied some whale bacon, whale jerky or canned whale meat you could have bought it from Amazon’s Japanese website, amazon.jp, until the 21st of February last month. Following investigations by the Environmental Investigation Authority (EIA), Amazon was forced to take down all whale and dolphin products from their website and empty their warehouses of all cetacean-meat stock.
Shockingly, the EIA found 147 whale products on the online giant’s website. Several of these products were found to breach the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) which forbids the international trade of threatened species. There were certain whale species for sale which are strictly protected by International Whaling Commission policy; it is prohibited by law to even hunt them. Amazon.jp also had various dolphin products for sale, which doubtless originated in Taiji, the centre of Japan’s dolphin industry.
The 2009 Oscar-winning docu-film, The Cove brought this shadowy industry to a global audience. The film graphically showed the horrific dolphin-killing practices and calls into question the culture of hunting dolphins and whales in Japan.
The EIA analysed the composition of the products sold – many had levels of mercury way above the accepted safe limits for human consumption. Dolphin meat is known to contain extremely high levels of mercury; this fact suggests Amazon was selling allegedly whale-based products that were actually dolphin meat in disguise.
More than 2000 whales are still killed every year. It is a sobering thought that a company like Amazon with a net worth $78.09 billion has been flouting conservation laws to this degree.
Read this article for more information.
Check out the trailer to The Cove here:
If the dolphin meat were sourced sustainably (and perhaps a little less cruelly, although I doubt the average tuna or pig much enjoys its last moments), would you object to its being sold?
Providing they were sustainably sourced, that would be totally fine with me. I’m not one of those hypocritical people who shout about “SAVE THE DOLPHINS WOOOOOO THEY’RE SOOOOOOOO CUTE❤❤ <3" whilst tucking into their juicy steak. I was a hardline veggie for 8 years but I love fish and meat but I'm very fussy in that I have to know where it comes from… i.e. I always make sure that's it's been raised sustainably and ethically. Because of this I don't eat meat that often, "nice" meat is expensive. I have red meat only a few times a month, partly because it makes me so guilty to think how much energy is require to make one kilo of beef (for example) versus one kilo of grain, as well as the fact that I'm contributing to climate change with every mouthful. I'd guess, as a top-level predator, you probably require a pretty big input of energy to make one dolphin so the only thing I'd advocate is not to eat it too oftern. And obviously I hope the culling practice would be a little…nicer. Anyway I think it's pretty crazy Amazon were breaching CITES legislation.
Also thanks for the comment!
I remember hearing about this Amazon stuff but didn’t realise it was that bad. I’ll also give that film a look, thanks for highlighting it!
The Cove is an amazing film. I recommend you watch it with a friend because it’s pretty hard-hitting and it might make you cry… You’ll probably need a hug afterwards.
I saw the film ‘the cove’ a few months ago it really showed how brutal the killing dolphins, our supposed marine contemporaries in terms of intelligence, really is. I wonder if significant enough pressure will be ever be put on Japan so that it stops ignoring all the cetacean conservation legislation put in place – maybe the politicians really have gone mad from all that mercury!