さあ！諸君！捕鯨問題だ！

"I had no concrete idea of the extent of the pollution,"

"Contaminated dolphin meat was used in school lunches and parents had no idea."

"Not everyone is in agreement with the building, but it's such a small community that people have a hard time speaking up and saying what's on their minds,"


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Dolphin off menu
http://www.7days.ae/showstory.php?id=57606

Last Updated : Tuesday 04 Sep, 2007 -

A lawmaker in a Japanese town notorious overseas for hunting dolphins has called for a ban on the meat in school lunches, saying it has high levels of mercury.

Taiji, a port town in western Wakayama prefecture, has kept up a four-century tradition of herding thousands of dolphins and whales a year into shallow coves, where they are speared to death. But Taiji city assemblyman Junichiro Yamashita has broken ranks by opposing the annual slaughter - saying that the meat is contaminated with mercury.
Yamashita said he conducted lab tests last year on dolphin meat sold in supermarkets and discovered mercury levels ten times higher than allowed by the government. "I had no concrete idea of the extent of the pollution," Yamashita said. "Contaminated dolphin meat was used in school lunches and parents had no idea."
Japan is one of the few countries to kill dolphins, considered among the most intelligent animals, although Peru and some South Pacific islands also hunt dolphins. The dolphin hunt receives little attention in Japan, which also defies Western nations with its continued whaling.
Access to Taiji is sealed off during the dolphin kill. The French environmentalist group One Voice released rare footage in 2004 showing trapped dolphins futilely trying to escape as the water turned red with their blood.
Yamashita is fighting against the building of a 330 million yen ($2.85 million) slaughterhouse meant for dolphin meat to be distributed in Japan. "Not everyone is in agreement with the building, but it's such a small community that people have a hard time speaking up and saying what's on their minds," he said.
Whaling and dolphin hunting is the major industry in Taiji, a town of 3,500 people. Yamashita said local schoolchildren ate dolphin meat two to three times a month. He said that while Taiji was not polluted, the dolphins most likely fed off mercury-tainted fish in adjacent waters contaminating their bodies.