Whale Meat Doesn't Sell: The ICR Reports Miserable Result of Auction

By Junko Sakuma
Excerpt from IKAN-Net News 51

900 tons, an astonishing 3/4 of JARPN II meat, is left unsold from the auction. Nisshin-Maru returns from Antarctica (whose “mission was cut short by SS”) bringing back over 1000 tons. Now with the whale meat silently mounting in their warehouses, the future of the ICR is uncertain…

 On October 27th 2011, the Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) announced that it would send 1121.9 tons of whale meat to auction. This is the byproduct of its summer research program in the Northwest Pacific Ocean, and the amount equals much of the meat for commercial distribution previously sold on a negotiation basis. The only exception to the bidding is 3-tons of sperm whale meat, and 235.9 tons secured for public distribution that will be provided to rural communities and schools at low prices.

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Oct. 31 2011 NGO Joint Statement

Don't waste 2.28 billion yen on whaling in the Southern Ocean - Use the money for Tohoku regeneration and disaster victim support!

October 27, 2011
Joint Press Release

On October 21st, the Japanese government obtained Cabinet approval on the third supplementary budget. This budget is primarily for the reconstruction of the affected people and areas of 3.11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power plant disaster. However, within it is a subsidy allocated for the continuance of research whaling, amounting to 2.3 billion yen (*1).

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Booklet: Research Whaling? It's Time to Finally Stop.

Noda administration is trying to make up for the research whaling deficit with the national budget.

Research whaling has been conducted at a deficit for years that even the review panel of the Fisheries Agency recommended the possibility of halting or reducing the size of research whaling. Even then, the government is likely to give out an extra budget in addition to

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Rescue ICR? not the victims of 3.11?

At an October 4th press conference, the Japanese government announced it would carry out the fall term of research whaling in Antarctica, which was earlier cut short in February of this year.

The Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR), an organization that runs with the profit from whale meat sales and the 500 million yen annual government subsidy, conducts the research whaling. However the whaling operation has become a challenge recently, with the decrease in whale meat sales

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Whale Meat -rapidly increasing stocks and a huge potential stock Excluded Iceland's Fin Whale in the Japanese National Survey

This article is kindly translated in English by Japan Wildlife Conservation Society.
Thanks to Ms. Chikako Yamasaki and Mr. Simon Varnam who volunteered to translate.

Stocks reach new peak at the end of October

This graph shows the monthly whale meat stocks from 1997 to October 2010 when stocks reached 5,525 tons, the largest since 1990. But there is more to this than meets the eye. The actual amount of unsold meat may be higher than these figures for 2010 seem to show. Let's take a look at the background by comparing stock figures with production figures.

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