Iruka & Kujira Motion Community, a 26-year-old advocacy and volunteer group for dolphins and whales in Japanese waters, claims that Japan’s whaling business at present has stockpiles of undesirable whale meat that’s being provided as pet meals elements or treats as soon as once more.
IKAN for brief, the citizen community stated gross sales of recent whale meat stay comparatively robust in Japan, however poor demand for the frozen variety has led whaling firms to repurpose it as pet meals.
This isn’t the primary time that floor up whale meat has allegedly ended up in Japan’s pet meals market. As early as 2003, animal welfare teams have been warning pet homeowners that they could possibly be feeding whale meat to their canines and cats.
A November 2021 evaluation of the Japanese pet meals market by Animal Liberation, a non-government group in Japan, discovered 34 Japanese firms producing and promoting 61 completely different processed, frozen, freeze-dried or uncooked merchandise constituted of sei, minke, and fin whales. Greater than 50 merchandise have been focused for canines (uncooked meat, processed whale meat in pouches, dried jerky, flakes or sprinkles, biscuits, freeze-dried cubes, and so forth.), and one other 10 merchandise have been focused for each canines and cats. An omega-3 complement constituted of whale blubber can also be out there, IKAN added.
“Japan has resumed industrial whaling, claiming that whaling is a conventional business, however using pet meals is clearly not conventional. It’s a mistake to proceed industrial whaling with such unreasonable use,” stated Nanami Kurasawa, govt director of IKAN.
Japan just isn’t the one nation utilizing whale meat for pet meals. Norway additionally has its share of Norwegian whalers that final 12 months admitted to supplying whale meat to native pet meals firms.
Specialists say whale meat, identical to dolphin meat, is filled with excessive ranges of poisonous heavy metals like mercury so it is not really useful to be consumed by folks and pets alike. IKAN famous a drop in demand for whale meat through the pandemic however this has not deterred the Japanese authorities from allocating over 5 billion yen to proceed supporting its whaling business, IKAN stated.
Alma Buelva is a journalist from the Philippines. When she’s not writing about enterprise and know-how, she devotes her time to caring for animals and writing about them, too.
