Feature story - November 19, 2009
Greenpeace is calling for this year’s departure of Japan’s so-called ‘scientific’ whaling fleet to be the program’s last.
Final voyage of the Japanese whaling fleet?
The fleet crept out of port 19 November 2009 following a week of potentially crippling budgetary reviews and a high-profile visit from US President Barack Obama to Japan.
Earlier, Greenpeace unveiled a 'Yes We Can' banner in front of the departing factory ship Nisshin Maru, calling on new Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and the visiting US President Obama to work together to end whaling.
In their recent election campaigns, both leaders signalled that there is no future in whaling. The Obama administration is publicly opposed to 'scientific' whaling. Hatoyama promised to wipe out bureaucratic corruption and the waste of taxpayer money, of which the whaling industry is a prime example.
This year the fleet's Antarctic hunt will be subsidized by $8.8 million US of taxpayer money. The program already operates at a loss due to lack of demand for whale meat. The wholesale price of whale meat has just been lowered for the second time this year in an effort to stimulate the low demand and program costs are set to increase.
"Japanese taxpayers money is being squandered on life-support for a whaling program that produces virtually nothing of value," said Jun Hoshikawa, executive director of Greenpeace Japan. "The government should switch off the industry's respirator."
Elimination of subsidies to the program could also prove to be vindication for Greenpeace activists Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki, who were arrested in 2008 and are now on trial for intercepting a box of whale meat and exposing an embezzlement ring within the whaling program. While the resulting scandal made international headlines, the official investigation was suspiciously dropped.
"With well over 9,000 minke whales killed in 22 years and no useful data produced, Japan's so-called 'research' in the Antarctic is an international embarrassment," said Hoshikawa.
For more information on the Japanese whale-meat scandal:
http://www.greenpeace.org/tokyo-two
Greenpeace investigation: Japan's stolen whale meat scandal
Whale Meat Scandal Part Two: The Cover Up