Japan Kicks Off Coastal Whaling Season

[jpak]

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-asia/2007/jun/21/062101730.html

With knives sharpened and school kids watching, one of Japan's coastal whaling towns butchered its first catch of the season Thursday - and defended the practice against international criticism.

The team in the village southeast of Tokyo pulled two Baird's beaked whales caught the day before onto a landing station with pulleys and ropes, and chopped them into bricks of meat and blubber for sale.

It was Wada's first catch since the International Whaling Commission rejected a Japanese proposal in May to grant its coastal whalers rights to expand their catches, and the whalers here were angry.

Yoshinori Shoji, head of Wada's Gaibo Hogei whaling company, argued that whales should be managed like any other natural resource, and he rejected anti-whaling arguments that the animals should be protected at all costs.

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[Nihil]

1. Looks like it's time for open season on whalers ...

Butcher them, cut them into bricks of meat and blubber then sell them
to the same scum who buy whale flesh. The end-users probably wouldn't
notice the difference and, let's face it, it used to be done like that
(the traditional way) in the past so what's the problem?

:shrug: