Eat the Whales

The photo came from a Tokyo market.  The Sunday Telegraph:

Japan has introduced an education program into primary and secondary schools to teach students to eat whale meat.

Almost 60,000 whale meals were served at 280 schools during the program's first three months in the Wakayama province, south-west Japan.

The program has proved so successful, education chiefs are considering making it national.

Yummy.  I think I'll have the sushi instead, sans whale (hat tips to Nick Danger and Clayton).

Comments

[Anarch]

But... why?

" We want to tell our children, 'this is part of your culture', and we want to protect it."

No. No, you stupid Japanese person. No! This is a dumb reason! Consider the gospel of the Fafblog:

"We will never run out of oil!" says Giblets drinkin oil.
"Giblets that is what you said about runnin out of dodos," says me.
"There are still some out there!" says Giblets. "Come back to Giblets little dodos! Giblets misses you so!"

[rilkefan]

We saw a mother orca just off our boat in the Galapagos, and two dolphins rode our bow wave. I'm a happy carnivore, but the idea of eating cetaceans is sufficiently abhorrent to me that I'm thinking about the slippery slope towards vegetarianism at this instant.

[hilzoy]

rilkefan: go for it, at least to the extent of not eating meat produced in factory farms. That's just suffering for no purpose other than to let us gratify our taste for meat cheaply. And what with the appearance, in supermarkets, of things like cage-free eggs, it's a lot easier than it used to be.

Clearly, though, eating cetaceans is a lot worse.

[Jackmormon]

Ah, the environmental kind of quasi-vegetarianism. I was vegetarian for a number of years after driving by the Coalinga cattle farm. Now, on the rare occasions I buy meat, it's the organic and cage-free: pricier, but then meat has always been considered a luxury.

Nice grim Mary Poppins reference, Charles!

[hilzoy]

Jackmormon: actually, it's the ethical kind, though the environmental reasons might drive me to it if the straightforwardly moral ones didn't. I think that whatever line one takes on causing animals suffering for a bona fide good reason (e.g., medical research), causing them suffering for the sake of pleasure alone is wrong (and here I mean not sadistic pleasure in watching animals suffer, but e.g. the pleasure of eating meat.) I don't believe that killing them painlessly is wrong, except in the case of very intelligent and social animals (e.g., the great apes, dolphins, probably whales), but I think that causing them to suffer so that we can enjoy ourselves is.

We don't need to eat meat. (Actually, I have a standing exemption to vegetarianism for cases in which there really is no alternative; it comes up sometimes in the third world.) It just tastes good. And factory farming causes tremendous suffering. Ergo, etc.

[Gromit]

I started down that gravelly slope when I decided to eschew pork. I've managed to halt my descent just above fish. Though I am keenly aware that the cheap eggs and dairy products I consume are subsidized by those animals' eventual slaughter.

The whole experience has taught me that the meaningful continuum isn't actually from omnivore to vegetarian, it is from ignorance of your own dietary prejudices to awareness of just why you won't eat what you won't eat. Also, I now spend a lot of time carefully reading ingredient lists. The number of animal products that get put into seemingly safe things like yogurt and cupcakes is pretty astounding.

I do still miss the taste of some kinds of meat. Thankfully, substitutes just keep getting better and better. The Quorn folks have poultry down to an art form.

[Josh]

I was vegetarian for a number of years after driving by the Coalinga cattle farm.

Or, as one of my (vegetarian) friends refers to it, Cowschwitz.

[hilzoy]

Gromit: I should say that I eat fish (though I'm rethinking that one), and I'm also not a purist about things with tiny proportions of stuff in them. (One more detail about the line of reasoning behind this: it turns on not contributing to the existence of a market for factory farms, so I tend to be less concerned with minute amounts of stuff.)

And the substitutes are great. I was also veggie for a year when I was 12, and the difference between now and then is just amazing. (No more salted soy beans!)

[Jon H]

I wonder if the geniuses behind this whale meat promotion thing are among the Japanese atrocity-denial faction.

[CharleyCarp]

Bison.

Tastes good, and they sure look purty out there on the range.

[Jackmormon]

Fair enough, Hilzoy! (A little quick on the readin' and commentin' I was.)

[Factory]

I shall just note the hypocracy of making whales off limit to commerical fishing, whilst fishing every other edible species from the ocean without regard.

[Gromit]

You'll need to be more specific on the hypocrisy charge, Factory. I can think of plenty of valid reasons to value the lives of some species over others.

[liberal japonicus]

Ahh, something closer to home here. Well, the folks trying to get this are a rather small minority, and most folks, while (unfortunately) not disgusted by eating whales, are not thinking that this is one of the greatest pleasures on earth. On the other hand, eating maguro (tuna to you non-sushi types) is one of the greatest pleasures on earth, and the Japanese, faced with serious depletion, have gotten religion concerning management of tuna stocks.

Unfortunately, the whale fishing industry is struggling to survive, not only because Japanese are beginning to adopt Western revulsion to the practice, but because of modernization issues. I say unfortunately because when backed into a corner, the natural response is to use every technique and bureaucratic out possible. The attempt to serving whale to school children is aimed at parents and grandparents who were served whale almost daily for their school lunches in the 60's, thus trying to capitalize on nostalgia.

Fortunately (like the last, this is ironic), another problem is looming for the whale fishing industry, which is the presence of mercury in whales. While I think that the problematic moral nature of eating ceteceans can be highlighted, it would be far more effective to point out the health issues. Just as with US conservatives, or French cultural preservationists, there is a dynamic that develops where Japanese argue that because they are getting hammered, it means that this is something that they have to maintain as part of the truth of what it is to be themselves. A lot of that sentiment is at the root of the denial of atrocities, though I don't think that there are formal organizational linkages.

[dmbeaster]

So the whale eating promotion in Japan is the whaling trade industry equivalent of "Got Milk"?

[Anarch]

On the other hand, eating maguro (tuna to you non-sushi types) is one of the greatest pleasures on earth...

Yes. Yes, it is.

[Edward_]

The only thing worse than seeing a whale would be eating one.

[Francis/Brother Rail Gun of Reasoned Discourse]

I'm a little surprised by the liberal willingness to forego red meat but eat fish, on moral grounds.

true, the central nervous system of cattle is far more developed than fish, so cattle can (and frequently do) feel more pain in the process of being killed than fish do.

but fish stocks are really running out, and farmed fish cause tremendous amounts of environmental pollution. Fisheries policy nationally and internationally is just a disaster and there is a real risk of a multi-species population crash in the near future. The consequences of such a crash cannot be modelled.

beef, pork and chicken, by contrast, are farm products much like asparagus. EPA and the states are doing much more to control the waste stream generated by that farming, so the externality argument against eating farmed meat is much weaker than it used to be. (The inefficiency argument -- that it is wrong to eat meat because it takes too much energy and food to create it -- still has force if one is inclined to give weight to such arguments.)