Background - April 5, 2006
Update April 2006 After months of pressure from Ocean Defenders everywhere,our friends at seafood suppliers Gorton's, Sealord and parent company Nissui have withdrawn their active support for Japanese whaling.This does not mean an end to the so-called scientific whaling program, but it does mean we've driven home a very important point: whaling is bad for business. As our web wizard Adele put it, "We moused them into submission." Find out more about this victory here.
Greenpeace,along with Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and the Humane Society, revealed the link between the whaling in the Southern Ocean and Gortons. We revealed that the Japanese parent company that wholly owns Gortons, Nippon Suissan, also partly owns the whaling fleet whose boats depart every year to hunt whales in Antarctica.
This year the Japanese whaling fleet plans to take 935 Minke whales and 50 each of the endangered fin and humpback whales. Greenpeace is opposed to this senseless slaughter and is asking Gortons and Nissui to use their influence over the whaling fleet to end the hunting.
As the diagram shows Gortons is a wholly owned subsidiary of Nippon Suisan Kaisha. Nippon Suisan Kaisha also holds 30% of a company called Kodo Senpaku, which owns the Japanese Whaling Fleet. It is important to realise th \at there is only one Japanese whaling fleet, the fleet is not one of many, or part of a large industry, it is the single commercial whaling fleet hunting in the Southern oceans and if we can stop it, the whales will be saved. It's as easy as that.
It is our hope that the management of Gortons can put pressure on Nissui Suissan Kaisha, and that they in turn will put pressure on the whalers,Kodo Senpaku, convincing them to put the fleet to better uses. What might those better uses be?
Well we know that whale watching has proved a lucrative industry in many parts of the world, far more profitable than the loss-making business of killing whales, freezing the meat and failing to sell it.We'd suggest that the whaling fleet devote itself to educating tourists about whales, because as we and the whales know only too well, there's no-one as good at spotting whales as the whaling fleet.
In the mean time you can help us. You can write to Gortons about whaling,and ask them to live up to their reputation as a caring and responsible family firm,and put pressure on their owners and the whalers to change their business.
UPDATE: Thanks everyone. They listened to you!
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