8 December 2005
An open challenge to Gorton's
by Shane, onboard the Arctic Sunrise
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 the wholly owns Gortons, Nippon Suissan, also partly owns the whaling fleet the very boats that are right now hunting whales near Antarctica.
We asked Gorton's, as a responsible company and one that promotes whale watching on its website, to help bring an end to the hunt, and apply pressure 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 the activities described in the EIA report..."
To put it politely, we were pretty surprised by the Gortons statement. There is not the slightest doubt Nippon Suisan is involved in whaling and that this whaling produces over 50 million US dollars worth of whale meat every year which is sold on the open market in Japan. And the Gortons link to Nippon Suisan is pretty clear, as this diagram shows:
The fact that this whaling is labelled as 'research' is no excuse. This 'research' has been repeatedly condemned by the IWC, which does not need the data it is supposed to produce, and by the US government.
So our challenge to Gorton's: Half-truths, evasions and outright lies are not going to get you anywhere for long. The first step in dealing with a problem is admitting its existence. Come clean with your connection to the whaling industry, and use your influence to help bring an end to whaling. The comments section of this weblog post is open to you.
Read the EIA report, The Gorton's Family Whale Killing Business.
Take action: Tell Gorton's and Nissui that their customers do not support whaling!
More on the main Greenpeace International site.
Comments
Agreed. Gorton's involvement might not be something they chose, but they should make clear whether they're content to be complicit in this or whether they want to be part of the solution.
Posted by: Martin at December 8, 2005 1:00 PM
http://gortons.com/contact/question.php
Gorton's questions & comments site - drop them a line
Posted by: kfj at December 9, 2005 5:14 PM
Thanks. Great idea. I just sent them a note.
Be advised though that their privacy policy looks a bit gnarly. Excerpted:
It [your email address, etc.] may also be used by the brand responsible for the website or promotion, as well as by our other brands, to contact you regarding other products and services which may be of interest to you (including those we may offer jointly with other companies). ... We may also transfer, sell or assign your Personal Information to any entity to which we divest all or a portion of our business (for example, in connection with our sale of a brand), to the extent that you provided such information to the specific portion of our business (or brand) that is being divested, or otherwise in connection with a merger, consolidation, change in control, reorganization or liquidation of all or a portion of our business.
I took the time to click through to the "Do not contact" link on their privacy policy and filled out that form as well. Hopefully that gets me out of future spam.
Posted by: Andrew - Esperanza web editor at December 10, 2005 9:08 AM
I've been asking for the exposure of whaling companies and the boycotting of their products for many years. It's great to see that this is now happening.
Posted by: Nick at January 16, 2006 9:54 PM
What are the other companies that either Nippon Suisan USA or Nippon Suisan Kaisha (Nissui) own?
Who are the companies that are doing business with them?
Who are the companies that are doing business with Gorton's? Like for example, would McDonands still be buying fish fillets from Gortons?
Posted by: Devashi Wesumperuma at January 16, 2006 11:36 PM
You know what?
I think they should be sued for giving wrong company reports (in a way advertising using wrong information) publicly.
Posted by: Sk. Samoar Sattar Pinky at January 28, 2006 8:20 AM
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