Japanese fleet catches 177 whales in latest hunt

https://japantoday.com/category/national/japan-fleet-catches-177-whales-in-latest-hunt

by Leary • 8 years ago

101 136 8 years ago

yboris8• 8 years ago

My head spins about how schizophrenic the vast majority of the population is when it comes to meat consumption and love of animals.

People shed tears over pets, yet pay others to abuse animals (factory farming) just to enjoy a meal that's equivalently tasty to easily available options. People will condemn the Japanese for eating whales or dolphins, the Chinese for eating dogs, meanwhile they themselves cause the suffering of significantly more animals.

I hope in very near future, the mocumentary Carnage begins to resemble reality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnage_(2017_film)

dagoat• 8 years ago

Sure. But if those same people had a domesticated version of the animal they eat, with a name. Or if that animal was an endangered species. Or both. A lot of these "schizophrenic" people would probably think differently.

grumbalina• 8 years ago

Hey, good job conflating a whole bunch of very different aspects to feed your narrative; pretty much guarantees no one can support your position of one.

uxcolumbo11• 8 years ago

Can you expand on this? I'm not quite following.

uhtred4• 8 years ago

I completely support his position so it's at least a position of two. I don't think he has compounded multiple issues at all, animal cruelty is a single issue. People just like to pretend it's more complicated to avoid facing up to the consequences of their actions.

honkycat3• 8 years ago

False: Pedantic vegans will support OPs position, and feign ignorance at your point because it's convenient for them to pretend killing a severely endangered whale is the same thing as killing one of the 1.5 billion cows on the planet.

Don't expect any better either. Outright lies and false equivalences like this are all they seem capable of. They have been singing the same song for a decade and can't pack in the smug enough to realize it's not working.

It's like sitting through D.A.R.E. in grade school: We know what you are doing and we see through it. All it leads to is me considering everything that leaves your mouth a lie.

But, the vegan movement does deserve some credit:

I will say I have been LOVING the `It's an animal right's issue` position vegan groups have been adopting lately. It's a powerful coherent message, is not smug, and speaks to people at face value instead of condescending to them. It's more "MLK Jr." and less "Women and Women First".

retrac98• 8 years ago

Cognitive dissonance is a powerful force.

achamayou• 8 years ago

Chickens and cows (and dogs) aren’t threatened with extinction. Different sets of people have different objections, but as far as whales are concerned, it’s mostly a conservation issue.

kgwgk• 8 years ago

I imagine many people opposing whale hunting would also oppose whale farming.

elif2• 8 years ago

No, but animal agriculture (via disproportionate habitat destruction) threatens the extinction of many species.

h4b4n3r0• 8 years ago

It’s not just meat, a couple other things cause severe schizophrenia as well: notably, climate change and capitalism.

craftyguy• 8 years ago

Fallacy of relative privation.

synthmeat• 8 years ago

Yeah, lack of self awareness and cognitive dissonance is rampant. On topic of food it’s obvious since, well, everybody eats.

Just try asking people around how egg production works. Almost no one around me even had a clue. I even got an answer that chicken lays eggs once a year.

wpdev_63• 8 years ago

This is why I am incredibly excited about the impossible burger:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebNeUihciDI

It's the ultimate fake burger that has a 1/10 of the environment while being vegan.

Now if there was an equivalent for chicken then it I would never eat another animal again!

uxcolumbo11• 8 years ago

Try the beyondmeat chicken strips [0]

And here's a hat tip for wanting to give up meat!

[0] https://beyondmeat.com/products

uhtred4• 8 years ago

Gardein "chicken" products aren't bad. And tofu and tempeh can be awesome replacements for meat.

soared• 8 years ago

Another meaning behind OP's comment might be that you can eat food that is equally as tasty as meat, without eating meat or meat replacements. Obviously this wouldn't work for 50+ years since we're all entrenched in eating meat, but vegetarian dishes /can be/ just as tasty. I'd imagine hundreds of years of improving mostly meat dishes has made them better, but that could be fixed.

komali22• 8 years ago

I hate to be a downer but that impossible burger tasted like fried flaxseed to me. Nothing meaty about it at all.

I think the best route for global veganism will be vat-grown meat. I haven't had a chance to taste any but it seems the most logical route - why grow the animal when you can just grow the muscle tissue? After the process is made efficient it should be cheaper for ranchers, better for the environment, no animals have to die, tastes the same... Win/win/win/win

veridies• 8 years ago

If you live in the bay area, go to Berkeley when you have some time, to the vegan deli The Butcher's Son, and try their buffalo chicken sandwich. It's fantastic.

cannonedhamster• 8 years ago

Chicken is significantly easier than beef to make mock analogues. Quorn, tofurkey, lightlife, and all kinds of other companies make very convincing turkey and chicken. Impossible seems to be the only real beef analogue that's semi-enjoyed by meat eaters. I haven't found many long term vegans/vegetarians that like it. I personally didn't find it fulfilling.

ericdykstra7• 8 years ago

I'm not at all interested in eating a "burger" made using the same techniques as junk food. It's just trash made in a way to trick your brain into thinking it's getting real nutrition by faking textures and flavors a la Doritos and other processed foods. No thanks.

edit: I'd prefer a response to downvotes. Companies like Kraft, Frito-Lay, and Post have had "food scientists" whose main job have been tricking people into thinking absolute garbage is tasty for years. The results is an obesity crisis and tongues that are too confused to guide us to decent nutrition any more.

patejam• 8 years ago

While I'm also excited about fake meat, the impossible burger isn't close.

Impossible tastes as if you took low quality meat, pureed it, took all the fat out, made it into a patty, and then froze it. Sure, you could trick me into thinking its real meat, but not high quality meat.

And of course, this is completely different than creating a steak or something.

AnIdiotOnTheNet4• 8 years ago

I haven't tried the Impossible Burger as, as far as I'm aware, it doesn't exist within a 50 mile radius of where I live, but Beyond Meat's Beyond Burger is pretty great too.

trumped3• 8 years ago

don't forget about cats... they are spreading like the plague and there's an easy solution to that...

krylon4• 8 years ago

FWIW, I do not see how eating a dog or cat is morally worse than eating a cow. I am not a vegetarian, but honestly, that is mostly due to laziness and a fair amount of hypocrisy.

And yes, the thought of eating a dolphin or a humpback whale is kind of sickening. I guess that is largely due to Greenpeace and their "Save the Whales" stickers that I remember as being nearly omnipresent in my childhood. The difference, I guess, is that cows (and dogs) were not hunted close to extinction.

OTOH, stopping the hunt for whales is one of the few things where a huge number of countries all over the world has been able to find a consensus before whales are a different memory known only from skeletons in museums. Japan is basically giving the rest of the world the finger, and not because they are facing starvation without that precious whale meat.

emodendroket13• 8 years ago

But Minke whales are not close to extinction; isn't objecting to eating a Minke whale because blue whales are endangered something like objecting to eating chicken because passenger pigeons were overhunted?

j9461701• 8 years ago

We don't just condemn Japan for eating whales and dolphins, we already banned them from doing so. Instead Japan claims the whales they're killing are for "scientific research", which is bull and they're clearly in total violation of international accords. But the widespread international condemnation has caused Japan to double down on their whaling industry, as a symbolic attack on outsiders who they view as destroying their 'traditional values'. This is why, despite being a very tiny part of the Japanese diet, the Japanese government supports its whaling industry and keeps it from being shuttered.

My head spins about how schizophrenic the vast majority of the population is when it comes to meat consumption and love of animals.

People want cute things to live, and don't care what hell ugly creatures endure. It's a fairly consistent position, if rather vapid and aesthetist.

This case is a perfect example: Whales are cute, so we're quite cross at Japan for eating them. But blue fin tuna are ugly, and so despite being much more threatened and a much larger part of the japanese diet, no one really cares.

macintux3• 8 years ago

There's also an intelligence problem. Octopi, whales, dolphins are very smart animals. (Pigs too, but I try not to think about that.)

dTal• 8 years ago

Whales and tuna look equivalently as cute to me - i.e., not at all. Whales look almost exactly like fish.

The reason people object to whale hunting is whales are incredibly intelligent mammals, with a psychology we identify with - social and language-oriented, with lifelong family ties and a love of play.

52-6F-624• 8 years ago

I don't quite understand what you mean by schizophrenic in with what you describe.

Isn't it possible it isn't a unified issue?

I grew up in a rural region and I've seen the production first hand both on medium-sized farms to single hunts.

I have had pets I've loved and watched them die and it made me sad. I also have an issue with the mass whaling because we know of the extinction risks and the goal when eating an animal isn't to wipe out the species.

I will confess, however, I haven't seen one of the American style factory farms. Any I've been to here in Canada haven't been so cold or apparently cruel and nowhere near the size and volume of production.

I live in the city now and I consider myself lucky for knowing where all of my food feasibly comes from.

For that reason I don't see it as schizophrenic or cognitive dissonance. I like to think it's an accepting awareness— I think we're still very much animals, but ones at least intelligent enough to maintain the planet in good order and to avoid cruelty (if we give a damn).

Clearly there are problems in how a lot of food production (not just meat) is carried out, and usually with a root cause of greed.

Pegging those problems to people essentially not all resigning to vegan eating makes my head spin a little.

Side question for anyone who carries your perspective: I might even agree that refraining from eating any animals is the morally superior option— but do you think we morally owe it to nature (or whatever end) to refrain more than any other animal?

emodendroket13• 8 years ago

I kind of end up with the opposite position of the OP, but if you consider eating a whale or a dog barbaric but have no problem eating (say) an overfished white fish or a pig, you have to ask yourself why.

jlmorton• 8 years ago

You seem to have missed OPs point. Many of us in the West find hunting wild whales, or dolphins to be repugnant. Meanwhile, we're perfectly happy to eat factory farmed pigs.

And, yes, we do morally owe it to nature not to eat animals. The natural corollary is human rights. Human rights is just a philosophy. Most of us adhere to it today, but we have not for most of our existence. The default has been to kill large numbers of fellow humans, across all societies.

Do people have a natural right to life? Humanity did not think so until relatively recently, but now we see it as obvious.

Do animals have a natural right not to be killed by humans, now that we have other options? Of course, for the same reasons.

paulcole• 8 years ago

but ones at least intelligent enough to maintain the planet in good order

Bang up job we're doing, too!

yboris8• 8 years ago

I hold that conscious experience is likely the only thing that can matter morally. In the US, in fact, the vast majority of meat comes from factory farms - a place where sentient beings are living lives not worth living (roughly speaking torture). Buying meat thus results in market incentives to produce more meat in the future. So by buying meat, people are implicitly paying for more animal torture. Individual choices not to eat meat decrease the future supply*

It doesn't matter whether in the past things were different. It doesn't matter that other animals eat animals. What matters is that each of us has a choice when buying food in a restaurant or supermarket. A choice that directly results in less or more suffering of sentient beings.

* footnote in case you're curious: supermarkets are receptive to consumption patterns -- either at per-unit level, or at threshold they buy in bulk -- so you stand a chance of being the purchase that results in dozens more animal purchases. Factory farms are similarly responsive to market consumption patterns. Economists have studied the market elasticity of animal product sales and individual decision not to purchase does translate in decrease in future production.

gascan3• 8 years ago

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated -- Mahatma Gandhi

We don't owe it. But we should treat animals with compassion all the same.

Many vegans & vegetarians aren't really opposed to meat, they are opposed to suffering, and American industrial meat production involves a lot of animal suffering.

Aloha• 8 years ago

Meaning most humans do not like their meat sources to be cute, or too smart. Ideal meat is dumb as a post, and ugly as sin.

neuralRiot• 8 years ago

Let's not forget the environmental impact of current level of meat consumption too, anybody who cares about their future or their children's should be promoting vegetarinsm.

zhenekas• 8 years ago

Well it is all about how you kill animals. People kill animals for food the ones that they grow for food and other animals which population is threatning ecosystem. But killing out of some retarded tradition is idiotic. Especially endangered spieces

yboris8• 8 years ago

It's not "all about how you kill animals". Many vegetarians and vegans care far more about the life that the animals live. The short bit at the end is minuscule in importance compared to the life of torture animals experience in factory farms.

I'd rather live a marvelous life and be tortured for a few hours before death, than tortured for a lifetime and then "killed with compassion".

bribroder3• 8 years ago

equivalently tasty to easily available options

Honestly curious, what are these options of equivalent tastiness? Do they pass in blind taste tests with any "mainstream" meats? Are they at the same (or lower) pricepoint? Do they have the same (or better) nutritional value?

A lot of people probably agree with your general premise that meat consumption is cruel, but will probably continue eating meat because of one or more of the above.

AnIdiotOnTheNet4• 8 years ago

I think parent meant tasty food in general, not that fake meats are equally tasty (even the best aren't). Indian food, for instance, is often vegetarian and tastes amazing.

yboris8• 8 years ago

Just as the AnIdiotOnTheNet (other comment) said: tasty food in general, not specifically food that is meant to imitate meat, eggs, or milk.

honkycat3• 8 years ago

Explain how hunting a severely endangered whale is the same thing as killing one of the 1.5 billion cows on the planet.

uhtred4• 8 years ago

From the cow's or whale's perspective, it's the same.

ericdykstra7• 8 years ago

We (humans) have different relationships with different kinds of animals, just like other animals do.

We have a symbiotic relationship with companion animals like dogs and cats, work animals like draft horses and service dogs, and farm animals like cows and chicken.

These are all beautiful examples of humans and animals evolving together to provide for each other, leading to the reproductive success of both species.

dmritard96• 8 years ago

" and farm animals like cows and chicken. "

Population growth is not equivalent to symbiosis...

fipar3• 8 years ago

I don't think you know what schizophrenia is, and you could try to make your same argument without that wrong analogy.

yboris8• 8 years ago

I used the word as an adjective, so, relating to the general definition: a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation.

Let's see: a breakdown between thought, emotion and behavior (claim to "love animals" and then pay people to torture them, check), ... fantasy and delusion (refusing to acknowledge the horrendous conditions on factory farms, check) ... a sense of mental fragmentation (love one, but kill the other, check).

It's not a far stretch.

PurpleBoxDragon3• 8 years ago

I think that once you get enough of an outside view of any given society, we see the seams fall apart all over the place. Social norms are extremely inconsistent.

nojvek• 8 years ago

I am a vegetarian and have a dog. I love my dog. However I also know I'm a very hypocritic human being. The kibble my dog eats is made of chicken, so I'm actually sponsoring the killing 100's of cute adorable chicks to feed my dog.

But my dog doesn't like a vegan diet, probably not healthy for him either.

I think the argument I've heard from some of my meat eating friends is "why should we be vegetarians? animals kill other animals, we are also animals. Most animals don't usually kill their own kind. We do the same. At the end nature is quite violent. The most adaptable survive. Humans are the most powerful species because we've killed other potentially powerful species in the race of evolution. Killing to win is in our nature"

slimsag• 8 years ago

Meanwhile, Norway kills more whales than Japan on average according to the WDC[1] and proceeds to increase their quota for number of whales they can kill[2] all while running government-backed campaigns to market whale-meat as hip-and-trendy[3].

The real gruesome thing here is how we're not just hunting whales, but that the ones we do hunt are roughly 60% of the time pregnant ones[4].

[1] https://us.whales.org/whaling-facts

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/07/norway-b...

[3] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-30/whale-meat-marketed-to...

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/world/asia/whales-japan.h...

paavoova2• 8 years ago

Iceland and Faroe Islands, as well.

Somewhat gruesome "traditionalist" hunting is practiced [1]: baby birds just out of the nest are scooped out of the water and have their heads torn off while still alive. But the sad thing is, it can still be argued to be more humane and sustainable than factory chicken farming. And is probably far healthier, too.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LUv4sEyfcw

avar• 8 years ago

Whatever anyone thinks about whaling, that article from The Guardian has a clear agenda of taking things out of context. It just says "Norway has announced a 28% increase" in year-over-year whaling.

That's true, but compare that to historical values:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NorwegianWhaleCatches.png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_Norway#/media/File:...

It's pretty telling that they're not opting to tell you that it's a gradual ramp-up which is still around 1/2 of what they were doing in the 1980s.

The larger context here is that in 1992 Iceland, Norway et al. partially split off from the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and formed their own North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission (NAMMCO)[1].

Whaling quotas are now at an impasse where these countries decide them unilaterally, because the members of the IWC won't even have the discussion of what would be a reasonable science-based quota.

I have yet to see any suggestion that the whales being hunted in the North-Atlantic by these countries are threatened by these whaling practices. An large year-over-year increase on a relatively small quota tells you nothing. You need to look at how large the total stock is, how long it takes to renew etc.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Marine_Mammal_C...

lovich2• 8 years ago

I was under the impression that most of the push back on whaling is because whales are intelligent/sentient.

It's like asking someone what they think a reasonable, science based quota for murdering people is. You're not gonna find a lot of room to negotiate when that's the belief

trumped3• 8 years ago

At least we know the ocean is not empty yet...

krylon4• 8 years ago

I have been browsing through Wikipedia articles on various types of whales recently, and I was pleasantly surprised how much some whale populations have recovered since most of the world stopped hunting them. The conservation status of humpback whales is LC ("Least concern"), gray whales, too.

It's not all good, far from it, but it is nice to know that collectively, we manage to not mess up everything we touch every once in a while.

simmanian• 8 years ago

I've heard that much of the recent rise in some whale populations can be attributed to the climate change [1]. Apparently, whales are finding it easier to find food with the polar ice retreating. But, since Krill are vulnerable to acidification and dependent on sea ice, we don't know if the trend will continue.

[1] https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/some-whales-are-...

trumped3• 8 years ago

I'm glad that Wikipedia agrees. But yeah, if you can catch 200 whales, there is probably at least a few multiples of that left...

pvaldes2• 8 years ago

Only some whales are recovered. Lets not forget that other went extinct "yesterday", and some big whales didn't recover after fourty years of work. Is not so simple.

jondubois• 8 years ago

I tried Minke whale when I was in Iceland. Unfortunately for them, they taste very good - Maybe the best meat I've tried. It's like a cross between beef and tuna but with a deep, complex (and very slightly gamey) aftertaste. It was surprisingly cheap too.

In spite of this, I'm not sure I would eat it again though; while eating it, I kept getting flashbacks of a video I saw of a whale being harpooned and pulled out of the water with blood everywhere.

Rationally though, I don't know if eating whales is more immoral than eating other animals. On the plus side, if you kill a single whale, you can feed a lot of people; you could save several dozens of cows... Not to mention that you're saving the lives of millions of krill that would have been eaten by the whale that day.

So if you're a shrimp sympathizer, then you should consider whaling a good thing. Personally, I can relate to feeling small and defenseless in this world so I can sympathize with the shrimp on some level.

ObsoleteNerd• 8 years ago

As someone with experience in animal farming (through family and friends), the whale issue seriously does confuse me. The way commercial meat farming is done is outright fucking disgusting. It's one of the biggest environmental issues of our era.

Endangered species should be protected, absolutely. But if we're going to rag on countries for fishing un-endangered whales, it's very much hypocritical.

"The IUCN Red List labels the common minke whale as Least Concern.[30] The Antarctic minke whale is listed as Data deficient.[31]

COSEWIC puts both species in the Not At Risk category [1]. NatureServe lists them as G5 which means the species is secure on global range [2]."

(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minke_whale)

For reference, I try eat as little meat in life as I can in general, and when I do eat it, I try to as ethical as possible. I'm not perfect, but I'm always trying to be better. I try not to judge other cultures on their eating habits though, when we're systematically destroying the planet so our cheeseburgers can be $1.

starpilot• 8 years ago

Minke whale population is super sustainable. They're cows of the sea.

emodendroket13• 8 years ago

Yeah, it is definitely pretty tasty. I'm not sure that the harpooning is really much more gruesome than what happens to other animals we're going to eat.

paavoova2• 8 years ago

I wouldn't eat whale simply due to its mercury, PCBs, and other bioaccumulated pollutant content: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5519659/

For a 60 kg person, consumption of 100 g of whale meat with the highest concentration of Hg (i.e. MeHg) found in this study (0.49 mg/kg w.w.) would lead to an intake corresponding to 51% of the provisional tolerable weekly intake (PTWI) set by JECFA (1.6 µg/kg bw) or 63% of the tolerable weekly intake (TWI) set by EFSA (1.3 µg/kg bw)

100 grams of meat is very little as far as protein and calories are concerned, but already puts you at risk. Not safe to eat in any sufficient quantity.

pvaldes2• 8 years ago

You would be saving the lives of millions of krill but sealing the fate of related millions of barnacles and whale lice...

legostormtroopr• 8 years ago

I hate the Western eco-hypocrisy when it comes to whaling.

Japan (and most of Scandinavia) have been whaling continuously for generations. Dolphin ‘farming’ for hundreds of years without impacting yield or stocks. It’s a huge cultural activity and they protect it.

But over the 1800-1900s the US, UK and Australia overfished whales at industrial scales making populations plummet. Whaling towns in Southern Australia literally ran red with rivers of blood. So in the 1970s and 80s after we’d reaped industrial benefit and destroyed wild stock, we Westerners decided that’s whaling was in fact really bad and decided to ban it - because we f’ed it up for everyone.

There are arguments about cruelty during whale hunting, but the same can be said for all farming, but the hypocrisy that a group of people can come in decimate an animal population and then tell everyone not to participate in their culture just doesn’t sit right.

Japanese fleet catches 177 whales in latest hunt

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