Saturday, February 11, 2006

Petfood!


So, as you may have seen in the news, Japan's whale meat mountain is getting turned into petfood. This shop is specifically advertising "whale jerky for pets" (that's a direct translation of the red text across this image on the left - the black writing says "it's our recommendation!!") I previously suggested that putting the unwanted whale meat in school dinners would be crass. I'm obviously hopelessly naive!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cynic. Anyone can see that this presents a wonderful opportunity for expanded scientific research on whaling. After all, it must get pretty boring just re-doing those hunting mortality studies year after year. (But I hasten to note that such research is essential, since without it how could we ever be certain that a whale killed in a given year's hunt will reduce the whale population by one? Only after many dozens of years will it become possible to exclude the chance that quantum effects could lead to a different outcome.)

Anonymous said...

BTW, what is that promotional phrase that was so deserving of a double exclamation point?

James Annan said...

"It's our recommendation!!" (commonly seen on menus for the chef's special). Had to look up that kanji to check, the phrase is usually written in purely phonetic form.

To be fair, many of these whales are not particularly threatened, and there is plenty of hypocrisy in the anti-whaling attitude IMO. But as the overwhelming majority of Japanese clearly don't want to eat them anyway, the whole situation seems rather farcical.