Feature story - December 13, 2005
Last week Greenpeace, along with Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and the Humane Society, revealed the link between the whale hunting in the Southern Ocean and Gorton's, the well-known seafood brand in the United States. We revealed that the Japanese parent company that wholly owns Gorton’s, Nippon Suissan, also partly owns the whaling fleet – the very boats that are right now hunting whales near Antarctica.
Nissui brand whale meat tins.
We asked Gorton's, as a responsible company and one that
promotes whalewatching on its website, to help bring an end to the
hunt, and applypressure to their parent company to get out of the
business of whaling.
Unfortunately, Gorton's have stuck their head in the sand,
issuing this statement:
"Neither Gorton's or its parent company Nippon Suisan
[Nissui]participates in whaling, nor do we have any connections to
theactivities described in the
"EIA report..."
To put it politely, we were pretty surprised by the Gorton's
statement.There is not the slightest doubt Nippon Suisan is
involved in whalingand that this whaling produces over 50 million
US dollars worth ofwhale meat every year which is sold on the open
market in Japan. Andthe Gorton's link to Nippon Suisan is pretty
clear, as this diagramshows:
The fact that this whaling is labelled as 'research' is no
excuse. This'research' has been repeatedly condemned by the IWC,
which does notneed the data it is supposed to produce, and by the
US government.
So our challenge to Gorton's: Half-truths, evasions and outright
liesare not going to get you anywhere for long. The first step in
dealingwith a problem is admitting its existence. Come clean with
yourconnection to the whaling industry, and use your influence to
helpbring an end to whaling. The comments section of
our weblog post isopen to you.
Read the EIA report,
The Gorton's Family Whale Killing Business.