NY Times Comes Out Swinging Against Japan's Whaling 'Embarrassment'

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<p><a class="checked-link" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/elisfanclub/4543119433/sizes/m/" style="text-decoration: none;">Eli Duke/Flickr/CC BY 2.0</a></p>

On Sunday, the New York Times editorial board joined the chorus of voices speaking out against Japanese whaling. Despite an international ban that prevents commercial whaling, Japanese boats catch minke whales under a clause that allows for "scientific" research - an excuse that often means more whale meat in supermarkets but little in the way of discovery.

Consumers in Japan, on the whole, have soured on cetacean meat. What little Japanese demand is left is buoyed by propaganda. When Japan announced a new quota for whales in 2015, the Times editorial board pointed out: "Staff members of the ministry of economy, trade and industry took up chopsticks at a televised stir-fry, heartily eating and endorsing whale meat ‘to protect our food tradition.'"

In further defense of the hunts, the Japan Whaling Association released a video in August falsely claiming, among other things, that hungry whales are causing fish stocks to decline:

(JWA 日本捕鯨協会 Japan Whaling Association/YouTube)

click to play video

Japan has taken the pretext of scientific research and stretched it into a "gross loophole," as the Times put it. The country recently declared it would decrease its take of minke whales to 333 animals next year from about 1,000 animals in 2014. The Times - along with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Australian and New Zealand governments, Humane Society International and several other state, conservation and cetacean welfare organizations - rightly considers Japan's quota unacceptable and a "diplomatic embarrassment":

The plan is a variation on the same evasion of treaty obligations, just as Japan's insistence on "science" as its prime motive rings hollow in a field where experts say nonlethal research already suffices.

The paper of record is echoing what many have been saying all along - nothing good comes from Japanese whaling.