OOOhhhhwho oooohieayAAAYa Whoooohuuuuuuauauauw.

Joe: Do you know eskimos eat whale fat and blubber?

Blow: Well you would, too, if you ate whale fat.

Port isn't that expensive. YOu can get pretty good late bottled vintage port for

This story is ripe for 60 minutes

Actually the vote-buying and vote-packing is not all on one side. Take a look at the anti-whaling votes. Such maritime giants as San Marino, Monaco, Luxemburg, Slovakia and Hungary.

My bride and I have visited St K and N twice. It is an idyllic place. In addition to Japan's largesse, they also receive a LOT of money from Kuwait.

From what I've read, there isn't actually that much consumer demand for whale meat. It seems that it's more about power and control than anyone actually wanting to eat the stuff. By all accounts it's not even that nice...

It should be a rule that no landlock country can be on the IWC.

I ate whale meat once, many years ago when it was still acceptable. (It was in Boston, an old whaling town. Bona-fide cultural attribute and all that, which also explains why Norwegians in Minnesota eat lutefisk.)

The meat tasted like some kind of compromise between fish and liver. Still better than lutefisk, mind you ...

Dr. Ellen

The Japanese may well want to restore whaling for gustatory reasons, but I don't think that's so for Iceland. Fishing is a huge industry for Iceland and a rebounding whale population competes for fishing stock with Iceland's fleet. Iceland's marine commission assigns quotas in order to ensure the health and stability of fishing stocks. More whales equals lower quota. With respect to non-endagered whale species, i think Iceland's point is that it is like telling a farmer he can't kill pests who eat his crops.

Taste like a cross between California Condor and Tiger

Ben_H,
Seeing as whales eat microscopic sea life (as opposed to fish) I think you're a bit off on your post.

In otherwords, Whales don't eat fish.

bmasso,

While certain species do exist solely off of plankton, there are several species of toothed whales (sperm, beluga, and narwhal come directly to mind) that do eat fish. And seals. And anything else that can't swim fast enough to get away from them. Or kill them first.

And all three of those are on the endangered lists, so they wouldn't come under the expanded hunting protocols anyways.

But you have to wonder if the protocols will cover non-endangered species of dolphin...

There is no need whatever for us to kill whales. The stuff about fish stocks is hogwash. The countries that claim this are simply trying to hang on to their traditional hunting preferences. Dolphins are slaughtered wholesale in the south Pacific, BTW.

These people are trying to destroy the Earth, but thankfully Cpt. Kirk can travel back in time, grab a couple of whales and head back to the Future with them, there by saving the Earth.

Seeing as whales eat microscopic sea life (as opposed to fish) I think you're a bit off on your post.

Kinda depends on the kind of whale under discussion, as Off Colfax mentions. Orcas will eat whatever they can catch- up to and including sharks and other whales.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orca

A friend who visited Norway not too long ago presented me with some whale meat jerky and I have to say, it wasn't really all that good; it was almost completely black, had a horrible texture and the taste left many things to be desired.

So, if whaling passes the "global test" will Democrats support it?

The small sample above shows that Europeans just dont like whale meat and by extension, abhor those eating it. The Japanese are making an heroic effort to preserve their traditional culture. Is it fair to force them to feed on American beef hamburgers? Let them eat their beloved raw fish and whale meat with seaweed.

Nota Bene: Hungary is a traditional maritime power. Admiral Horthy was its regent not long ago. Some of the Salomon Islands were discovered by the Hungarian Navy and named after Hungarian royalty. The Trianon treaty, unjustly, left it - temporarily - a sealess chunk of a country. Nem, nem, soha!

Whale sashimi is mediocre--really heavy and you cannot get over the thought of the possible serious parasitic infection. Cooked, Minke whale would probably be something close to beef liver in appearance and texture. My daughter, who has had it in her school lunches, says it is delicious.

Sperm whale meat would probably be inedible, unless the whales have a way of neutralizing the ammonia in their primary prey, giant squid.

Orcas are in no way endangered--but eating their flesh would probably lead to neurological damage. As the predator at the absolute top of the food chain, orcas are absolutely dripping with mercury.

The Economist got the facts wrong: Japanese whalers hunted humpbacks off Australia this year for the first time. Whether they caught any is unclear.

IWC negotiations are the only substantial negotiations still handled by Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries bureaucrats alone. It is their one chance to "defend Japan's honor" without interference from METI or MOFA. Stuck as they are in an increasingly irrelevant ministry, MAFF bureaucrats love driving the regular diplomatic corps of METI and MOFA into despair.

Nothing gives MAFF bureaucrats bigger hard-ons (MAFF bureaucrats are always men), however, than provoking anti-whaling protestors. Though smug recitations of transparent lies and hyperbolic language (one of the more masterful MAFF negotiators called Minke whales "the cockroaches of the sea") they push the anti-whaling crown into responding with bigoted, anti-Japanese screeds.

The regular diplomatic corps hates the damage the MAFF does to Japan's image. They also hate doling out the ODA giveaways to IWC freeloaders. Buying IWC votes wastes resources that could be better deployed in countering Chinese influence in Asia, Africa or Latin America. IWC vote buying also pisses off English-speaking Pacific countries and non-Scandinavian Europeans.

With respect, I give no weight to an American´s opinion on whalemeat shushimi. Whalemeat has no taste in itself, one's genetic makeup and cultural milieu makes it great or abominable. And hunger, who is the best cook. BTW, was it Reagan or Carter that vomited in a Japanese State banquet?

This whale issue is overdone, like the fried puppy the Koreans served to indignant European visitors. My Asian hosts always politely accept that my religion forbids me to eat their food.

That brings me to the point that we are not only forbidding Japanese to give up their beloved whalemeat, but we are forcing down their throats our beef burgers that make them sick and milk products that they cannot digest (the lack the enzime for it). Japan has lifted today its ban on U.S. beef imports. It had banned American beef in 2003 after the first case of mad-cow disease was reported, but imports resumed briefly before being halted again after a shipment of veal that contained backbone -- which is considered high-risk. The easing of the ban will give U.S. ranchers access to what was once their most lucrative foreign market

jaimito - I can't see how lifting a trade ban is equivalent to forcing anything down people's throats. Well, I am only an economist.

jaimito -

Bush Senior fell ill at a banquet in Tokyo in 1992.

Milk, cheese and beef are all consumed in vast quantities in Japan. Much of it is imported; much of it is not.

The American "beef" is that the Japanese government banned imports from the gigantic beef industry of the United States, where there have been two confirmed cases of BSE, while not banning the consumption of beef coming out of the tiny Japanese industry, where there have been 26 confirmed cases.

The ban on beef from the U.S. has led to classic replacement strategies. Beef imports from the United States have been replaced with beef imports from Australia and other Pacific producers. Dishes that used to contain beef are being produced--temporarily, the restaurants insist--with pork, much of it imported from Mexico.

As for your dismissal of my tastebuds on the basis of my passport, you are a throwback to the 19th century. Welcome to the 21st.

No one is dismissing Mr MTC´s honorable taste buds, but the Japanese are adapted to feed on farm and sea products, while pastoral peoples have been selected to thrive on beef and milk. In fact, Japanese much prefer fish to beef, and milk gives them stomach ache.

Regarding protecting weak local industry against foreign competition, it is very unjust. And so real world.

Waging a campaign to discourage the consumption of whale meat by cutting its supply, and offering cheap and prestigious American substitutes ... what it is called by economists? A coincidence?

jaimito -

Adopting your fantabulist view that Japanese (a mixture of Polynesian and continental peoples) are adapted to eating farm and sea products (since one quarter of the pre-modern population was living in mountain and foothill villages with little access to sea products aside from salt, are their descendants not "real Japanese"?) we are nevertheless left with a conundrum--since whales are mammals and cows are mammals, their flesh more similar to each other than whale flesh is to fish flesh.

Where does seal eating fit into your reductionist schema?

MTC

The issue here is the management of a shared resource, the problem of the commons. Does IWH a good job?

Japanese and Americans seem to be talking about different things. For the The Japanese, whales are tasty sea food, reproducing like cockroaches. For Americans, whales are decorative props in a marine theme park, sacred sea monsters.

MTC

The issue here is the management of a shared resource, the problem of the commons. Does IWH a good job?

Japanese and Americans seem to be talking about different things. For the The Japanese, whales are tasty sea food, reproducing like cockroaches. For Americans, whales are decorative props in a marine theme park, sacred sea monsters.

MTC

The issue here is the management of a shared resource, the problem of the commons. Does IWH a good job?

Japanese and Americans seem to be talking about different things. For the The Japanese, whales are tasty sea food, reproducing like cockroaches. For Americans, whales are decorative props in a marine theme park, sacred sea monsters.

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