Greenpeace seeks charges over whale meat

Greenpeace Japan on Thursday filed a criminal complaint against 12 crew members of a research whaling ship, saying they are suspected of keeping for personal gain a ton of meat from whales caught in the Antarctic Ocean.

A Greenpeace Japan member Thursday shows whale meat the group says it intercepted.(YOSUKE FUKUDOME/ THE ASAHI SHIMBUN)

The group says the crew members aboard the research vessel Nisshin Maru sent cardboard boxes believed to have contained whale meat to their homes.

At a news conference Thursday in Tokyo, Greenpeace Japan members displayed whale meat they said they intercepted en route to the home of a crew member. The box contained 23.5 kilograms of coveted whale meat used for making bacon.

The estimated value of the meat in the box is between 110,000 yen and 350,000 yen, according to Greenpeace Japan.

Group members said the box was one of 47 they tracked from the 8,044-ton ship, which returned to Tokyo last month. The destinations of the boxes were the homes of the 12 crew members, who are the targets of the criminal complaint filed with the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office, they said.

"Taxpayers' money is used for research whaling," said Jun Hoshikawa, executive director of Greenpeace Japan. "Since this is an issue that relates to trust in Japan, there is a need for the government to conduct a thorough investigation."

Greenpeace Japan acknowledged that it intercepted the box without permission. But a lawyer representing the group defended the action.

"It was done to secure evidence of embezzlement," the lawyer said. "It is obvious that (Greenpeace) does not intend to sell it. It is not equal to theft."

The government's Fisheries Agency ordered the Tokyo-based Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR), which is authorized to conduct research whaling, and Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha Ltd., the Tokyo-based company that operates the whale research vessels, to investigate the allegations.

Hajime Ishikawa, an ICR official who led the fleet in the Antarctic Ocean, acknowledged that portions of whale meat have been given to crew members as gifts.

"It has been a longstanding practice since we were whaling as a commercial activity (until the late 1980s)," he said. "We treat it as comparable to making whale meat a source of our meals (during the voyage). It should not be a problem."

A Kyodo Senpaku official said each of about 250 crew members of a research whaling fleet receives 10 kilograms of whale meat for free as a token.

However, Greenpeace Japan noted that if the 47 boxes sent from the Nisshin Maru contained a similar amount of whale meat, the total would have exceeded 1 ton.

Greenpeace Japan suspects some of the whale meat may have been illegally diverted to whale meat shops and restaurants, according to sources.

Group officials called on the Fisheries Agency to review research whaling expeditions and to revoke its permission for the ICR to conduct research whaling.

Shigeki Takaya, an assistant director with the agency's Far Seas Fisheries Division, criticized the practice of giving whale meat to crew members.

"It should not be allowed to offer whale meat for free as a gift," he said. "If the crew members had taken a large amount of whale meat with them, it is inevitable that they would be suspected of doing so for financial gain."

The ICR carries out the research whaling program by leasing vessels and crew from Kyodo Senpaku.

A Kyodo Senpaku official said the company paid the ICR for the whale meat distributed to crew members as gifts.

Under the program, whales caught are studied and later cut up so that their edible parts can be sold on the market as "byproducts" to help finance research whaling.

In an interview with The Asahi Shimbun, a former crew member who was engaged in research whaling in the Antarctic Ocean from 2005 to 2006 admitted that many crew members tasked with dismembering the mammal took out meat, including parts used to make bacon, and salted it in their rooms aboard the ship.

They then put the meat in cardboard boxes and sent them to their homes or other places when they returned to Japan, according to the former crew member in his 50s.

One crew member sent boxes weighing 200 to 300 kilograms, according to the crew member.(IHT/Asahi: May 16,2008)