Whale meat
Whale meat can be prepared in various ways, including salt-curing, which means that consumption is not necessarily restricted to coastal communities.
[2] According to Catholic practice at the time, aquatic creatures were generally considered "fish", therefore whale was deemed suitable for eating during Lent[2] and other "lean periods".
[3] An alternative explanation is that the Church considered "hot meat" to raise the libido, making it unfit for holy days.
French surgeon Ambroise Paré (died 1590) wrote that "the flesh has no value, but the tongue is soft and delicious and therefore salted; likewise, the blubber, which is distributed across many provinces, and eaten with peas during Lent".
[3] In early America, sailors onboard whalers may have eaten blubber after rendering, which they termed "cracklings" or "fritters", said to be crunchy like toast;[10] these were certainly reused as fuel chips to boil down the fat.
A report by one of the Tokyo Two (Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki), anti-whaling activists from Greenpeace, who intercepted whale meat package deliveries got no further than the sentiment by one restaurateur that it would take Nagatachō (i.e. high government) connections[17] to get it.
A Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC) investigation has documented the practice of commercial wholesalers commissioning subsistence whalers to supply the demand by supermarkets.
[19] In a controversial and widely criticized move, Iceland has announced the renewal of a one-year permit allowing the resumption of commercial whaling activities.
After World War II, due to damage to Japan's infrastructure, whale meat became an important source of proteins.
[15][24] The prized tail meat, called onomi (尾の身) or oniku (尾肉) are two strips of muscle that run from the dorsal to the base of the fluke.
Masanori Hata (aka Mutsugorō), a zoologist author and animal shelter operator, has extolled the delicacy of the tail meat.
[14][25] When the ban on this species was in place and Japan ostensibly complied, what was claimed to be genuine fin whale was still available, and legitimized as "grandfathered" goods, i.e., frozen stock from animals caught when still legal.
They have claimed that it has been illegally smuggled from crew members of research ships[29] and that more meat is caught than can be consumed by humans, with up to 20% of 2004's catch going unsold.
A 2005 poll commissioned by Greenpeace and conducted by the Nippon Research Centre found that 95% of Japanese people very rarely or never eat whale meat.
Traditionally, whale meat was preserved by hanging salted pieces (called "likkjur") outdoors under a roof to be dried in the wind.
In 2008, Faroe Islands Chief Medical Officer Høgni Debes Joensen and Pál Weihe of the Department of Public and Occupational Health recommended that pilot whales no longer be considered fit for human consumption due to the presence of DDT derivatives, PCBs and mercury in the meat.
[34][35] As of 1 June 2011, the Faroese Food and Veterinary Authority has advised Faroe Islanders not to eat the kidney or liver of pilot whales, not to consume more than one serving per month, and, for women and girls, to refrain from eating blubber if they plan to have children and to refrain from whale meat entirely if they are breastfeeding, pregnant or planning to conceive in the following three months.
A research study was conducted by Tetsuya Endo, Koichi Haraguchi and Masakatsu Sakata at the Hokkaido University found high levels of mercury in the organs of whales, particularly the liver.
The study found that liver samples for sale in Japan contained, on average, 370 micrograms of mercury per gram of meat, 900 times the government's limit.
A study done on children of the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic showed neurological problems stemming from mothers consuming pilot whale meat during pregnancy.
[43] In 2008 the pro-whaling interest group High North Alliance suggested that the carbon footprint resulting from eating whale meat is substantially lower than that of beef.
[citation needed] Groups such as the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society have attempted to disrupt commercial whaling with varying degrees of success.
