"Save the whales, harpoon a Japanese sushi hunter"

As Japan pushes to expand its whaling rights, doubling its take of minke whales "for scientific purposes" and adding humpback whales to its kill, the national paper "The Australian" (conservative) has run a satirical column headed "Save the whales, harpoon a Japanese sushi hunter," which points out the ridiculous arguments the whaling community makes in support of its efforts. I thought it worth sharing with my whole list, not just the Aussies. I will paste it below. I hope Australian animal advocates and perhaps other anti-whaling activists on this list will pick up on the serious points and respond with letters to the editor. The Australian takes letters at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/files/aus_letters.htm

The Australian
Wednesday, June 8
The Wry Side -- Pg. 13

Save the whales, harpoon a Japanese sushi hunter

By Emma Tom

Members of Japan's pro-whale hunting lobby aren't a popular bunch. Their critics just can't seem to get a grip on the fact that luncheon meat is a perfectly acceptable byproduct of scientific research.

In 1 1/2 weeks, the International Whaling Commission will meet in South Korea, where Japan will argue that it be allowed to double its minke whale massacre and add endangered humpback and fin whales to its sushi trains ... sorry, legitimate scientific laboratories.

Given the likelihood of a vote in Japan's favour, it's high time anti-whaling countries such as Australia made more of an effort to understand Japanese whalers' methods and motivations, perhaps by taking a page out of the pro-whale hunting lobby's cookbook and conducting a program of limited, research slaughter.

Under this modest proposal, knowledge-hungry Australian scientists would be able to hunt and kill several hundred Japanese whale scientists per year to obtain important information such as how old they are, where they live and how their loins taste when marinated, barbecued and served with a feisty shiraz.

It will be a controversial move, but killing Japanese pro-whalers and dissecting them into delicious bite-sized pieces is the only way to help solve enduring mysteries about this enigmatic species. Such as how they think it's possible to nourish a local custom by eating its core ingredient into extinction. Or why they continue ignoring academic research questioning the notion that whaling has deep cultural roots in Japan in the first place.

(Keiko Hirata from the California State University is just one scholar who claims whale meat was eaten by large numbers of Japanese only in the dark decade after World War II.)

Of course once these tests have been conducted, all derivatives of the research should be eaten immediately to avoid waste. One possibility would be to follow the lead of the nattily titled Women's Forum for Fish, which met in Tokyo last weekend to discuss scrummy Free Willy recipes such as whale blood soup.

"Eating a whale is the same thing as killing and eating a cow," said one orca-eater from the forum (which was sponsored by the pro-whaler lobby).

The big problem with this argument is that there are about 1.5 billion cows in the world compared with fewer than 800,000 minke whales. Japan's pro-whalers, on the other hand, are growing in strength and numbers and will have no trouble sustaining the odd slaying.

They'll make great school snacks a la whale meat, which was recently re-introduced in 280 Japanese educational institutions after a 20-year absence. As with the whale lunch special, fillets of pro-whalers are bound to come up an absolute treat coated in breadcrumbs and fried with a little garlic and ginger.

There may be a backlash once the press starts running photos of dying Japanese scientists flopping around in pools of blood with harpoons hanging out of their spinal columns and grenades exploding inside their brains and so on.

Whingeing, dolphin-yoga types will probably start tacking "Save the Whalers" stickers to their bumper bars and calling for whaler sanctuaries.

They may argue hunting humans is wrong because our high intelligence puts us in a category different from other species made of meat. They may even suggest our scientific program is just a backdoor attempt to kick-start commercial cannibalism. But fortunately the pro-whale hunting lobby has shown logic is no longer necessary when defending self-centred and short-sighted action from international censure.

"So what if it's possible to study human behaviour by non-lethal means?" we'll say. "So what if our methods are rejected by every serious research community in the universe? The only way to investigate the merits of carnage-based research is to engage in a protracted bloodbath. Now stand back or you'll get desiccated liver all over your nice, white extinction statistics."

Obviously we're not recommending that all Japanese pro-whalers be butchered and eaten. But there does need to be a balance between the rights of these lobbyists to exist and the rights of those of us who have an overwhelming urge to aim large, pointy objects in their general direction.

tom [at] bigpond.com

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