Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
Emotive debate resurfaces as whale meat exports resume
Thar she blows! An emotive and familiar but very important debate.
News that Iceland and Norway have resumed whale meat exports to Japan for the first time since the early 1990s despite a U.N. ban is the latest twist in a saga that stirs passions in the conservation and animal welfare communities like few others.
The bottom line: Norway, Iceland and Japan hunt and eat whales despite a 1986 International Whaling Commission moratorium on these practices and condemnation from many countries.
There have been predictable howls of protest from various green and animal welfare groups.
The United States has also voiced its displeasure and urged Iceland and Norway to cease exporting whale meat to Japan.
