Calling the killing research ducks moratorium on commercial hunts, rights groups say.
Japanese whaling fleets have returned from Antarctica with 333 butchered bodies of minke whales in what officials are calling “ecological research.” Labeling the whale kill as science is a way to dodge a global hunting moratorium protecting the giant mammals, rights groups say.
Groups are exempt from the 1986 international ban on commercial whaling if they say they are doing so for research. Specifically, Japanese officials called the killings “research for the purpose of studying the ecological system in the Antarctic Sea,” Agence France-Presse reported Friday. Opponents of the program say it’s a cover for commercial whaling. The Japanese fleets sell the whales they’ve killed for food.
“It is an obscene cruelty in the name of science that must end,” said Kitty Block, executive vice president of Humane Society International. “There is no robust scientific case for slaughtering whales.”
But officials also insist that eating whale meat is part of Japan’s culture — though the meal is losing popularity — and they hope to resume full-on commercial whaling in the future.
