At the whaler's club | Home | "Normalising" the IWC means Business as Usual

WOW! I saw this picture today on the Al Jazeera website and was actually impressed how much coverage there was there regarding the whaling fleet of Japan. Thank you for spending your time to protest this. I am hoping that your prescence will make a difference. It has made a difference to me, I just wish I had more power to do more. Again, thank you.

"a discussion about why the anti-whaling countries took the stance they did, and he argued it is because they want to protect their livestock industries. The logic appeared to be that if whale meat was on the market, this would undercut the beef trade!"

ROFLMAO! :-D Yeah and we also don't want whaling to happen because we are secretly using the whales to catch all the fish and deliver them to us.

'This went on for a while until one delegate pointed out that the whalers had been boycotting the Conservation Committee in the IWC since it was formed several years ago!'

Haha. I knew it - whalers have not a small sparkle of conservancy in their heads.

Shane, thank you for your work there. Your efforts are as important as those of your mates in high seas.

Hi Shane,

There was a live feed at the last IWC meeting, is there any sign of one for this meeting.

We met at the Governor's reception in St. Kitts(talked about SS relationship !!), if you recall would you please drop me a line.

Best regards, thanks for being there at least we can get some idea of what is happening.

Martin

Hey Martin - remember, this meeting in Tokyo was not an IWC meeting.

"a discussion about why the anti-whaling countries took the stance they did, and he argued it is because they want to protect their livestock industries. The logic appeared to be that if whale meat was on the market, this would undercut the beef trade!"

ya..ya..im so afraid that i cant sell the tonnes of beef in my freezer due to the competitiveness of the market for whale meat..come on..get a life you people out at the "meeeting"

Shane, keep up the good work and make your impact there!!we need people on ground as well as in the seas!!

I for one would rather consume Antarctic minke whale than Australian or Kiwi beef (not to mention BSE beef from the US). But I do tend to agree that it's probably more likely the reason for the opposition to whaling is because it's simply the politically expedient thing to do in countries where there exists no whaling practices (excluding Alaska, which is apparently "cultural" enough to be accepted), although protecting beef export markets is a useful by-product of the campaign. But this is hardly acceptable for Japan, with food self-sufficiency of just 40%. Perhaps if New Zealand and Australia would agree to take in 60 million Japanese people the story might be different.

What's ironic is that groups like Greenpeace misinterpret whale meat stockpile figures (now less than 3,900 tonnes - a 1,000 tonne decrease over November and December with the sale of JARPN II by-products taking place) as indicating some kind of whale meat glut, when at the same time Australia and New Zealand together probably export more than 500,000 tonnes of their beef product to Japan each year, and there is far more tuna in stockpiles than there is whale meat. If anything, Greenpeace's criticisms have only served to highlight the fact to consumers that whale meat supplies have increased and prices have come down. The result? A 44% increase in total outgoing stock in 2006 over 2005. Well done - I'm sure that was the result you guys were hoping for :-)

As for why there is no video of the normalization meeting, I think Martin's question is a little bit backwards. The reason why the Japanese and others fought to have IWC meetings open for live broadcasts was so that the world could see just what a shambles the IWC is in. Having no video feed is the default for such meetings, where normally parties that have signed agreements conducted meetings in far better faith than is the case with the ICRW and IWC. Were the IWC to properly carry out it's mandated functions (the reason why the whalers signed the ICRW), the meetings would be extremely dull - everyone would turn up, the IWC Secretariat would produce the results of running the RMP with respect to managed stocks (i.e., the catch limits calculated), and the IWC politicians would have nothing to do other than rubber stamp them. The hope for the normalization meeting was that there would be less politics.

Re beef - just to show you how stupid this argument is..

The stockpiles of meat in Japan are about 5000 tonnes or so, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries of Japan. Even if they ate all of that within a year or even a month or even every month, Australia’s beef exports to Japan in November 2006 alone hit a record for the month, reaching 41,398 metric tons.

This follows the October 2006 record of 37,025 metric tons.

According to Meat and Livestock Australia, November beef export to Japan was the second highest for any month, behind March 2006 (43,263 metric tons).

Frozen grass-fed exports totaled 15,555 metric tons, a 37 percent growth from the 11,335 metric tons shipped in November 2005. And Japan also imports beef from the US as of July, so that's not even the total amount consumed.

I'm not condoning industrial agriculture by the way, but it pretty much eclipses the appetite for whale meat doesn't it - even in Japan.

[EDIT - just saw David@Tokyo's comment above - Just because David would rather eat minke whale, doesn't mean the rest of Japan would. As you can see, market reality as outlined above and public opinion polls in Japan show that the market for meat is growing, vs the market for whale, no matter how David tries to twist the facts.

In Japan, as David well knows, there are often big signs proclaiming that beef is 100% Australian as a good thing, including on Japan Airlines and at Freshness Burger chains. Japan is a developed country David, and not dependent on whale meat for food security. Whalemeat costs taxpayers in multiple ways - both through subsidising the "research", "fisheries aid" to buy votes at the IWC and damage to international reputation.]

Ok david@tokyo, time out. I haven't approved your comment because it was a monstrous 683 words long. You've got your own blog for that kind of thing - you don't need to post it here!

In a moment of charity, however, I've pasted your rant into the Talk to us thread where we can discuss these things properly.

Hey Dave,

I just saw Pepijn's comment over at the kiddies forum. If you feel gracious enough, would you mind posting my response to Pepijn, for his benefit at least?

(another 400+ words) edited.

Dave on the Esperanza: David@tokyo - you've attempted to post 1700 words+ in comments in the last 24 hours. Don't you ever sleep or work? You're more than able to post a reply all by yourself in the forums. They're quite easy to navigate and use and I have every confidence that you can figure it out for yourself. Just follow this link

David@Tokyo - you refuse to participate in the forum, but this is not an appropriate place for lengthy discussions - it is mean to be for news from the ship and comments on those update - COMMENTS, not diatribes. So either use the forum, or stick to your blog.

Hi Shane,

Thank you for pointing out the shameless hypocrisy of the pro-whalers boycotting the Conservation Committee in the IWC since it was formed several years ago.

'I just saw Pepijn's comment over at the kiddies forum. If you feel gracious enough, would you mind posting my response to Pepijn, for his benefit at least?' - D@T

Absolutely nothing childish about D@T publicly asking for his response to be passed on to someone he is far too mature to respond directly to... nothing childish about D@T whispering to Y/H San in Japanese on his English language blog either... no doubt about it D@T is the maturest, manliest man in Grownupsville... yes indeedy!
:o)