Japan 'selling banned whale meat'

TOKYO - Some of the whale meat eaten in Japan is from a species that has been banned for sale, Kyodo News agency said yesterday, quoting a Tokyo-based research institute.

The institute, Cetacean Research, has found that 3.3 per cent of whale meat sold in Japan is from a species which has been prohibited for sale by the International Whaling Commission (IWC), Kyodo said.

The institute found in DNA tests conducted from November last year to February this year that 54.3 per cent of the samples were from whales caught in Japan's programme for research whaling.

But the rest of the samples were mostly from small whales and even from dolphins.

Neither of these are protected by the IWC, Kyodo said.

'The whale-meat catches which were banned may have been illegally imported,' an institute official said, according to Kyodo.

'It is uncertain whether the whales were unlawfully caught because meat from whales caught in the era of commercial whaling, as well as meat from whales which ran ashore and died, also circulate in the market,' the official added.

The institute tested 300 samples of what is sold as whale meat in fish markets and department stores in Japan.

The samples included two from fin whales and one from a humpback whale, catches of which are banned.

Japan gave up commercial whaling in compliance with an international moratorium that took effect in 1986.

However, it has carried out research whaling under rules set by the IWC since 1987. --AFP