Japan's dolphin hunt sags under protests, concerns over mercury

[Guest guest]

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/culture/features/news/20080131p2g00m0fe022000c.html

 

Japan's dolphin hunt sags under protests, concerns

over mercury contamination

 

TAIJI, Wakayama Prefecture (AP) -- Every autumn and

winter, hunters from this craggy Japanese fishing

village corral thousands of dolphins into a tiny,

isolated cove and kill them for meat and fertilizer,

turning the water red with their blood.

 

And every year, foreign animal rights protesters

converge on the town, interfering with the slaughter,

clashing with fishermen and broadcasting grisly

photographs of the slayings around the world -- all

without stopping the hunt.

 

Now, Japan's dolphin hunters face a new, powerful

opponent: mercury contamination.

 

A series of scientific studies in recent years in

Japan have documented high levels of the toxic heavy

metal in dolphin meat, and a group of city councilmen

in Taiji launched an unprecedented campaign against

the hunt several months ago after doing their own

tests.

 

A leading regional supermarket chain has pulled

dolphin from many of its shelves over the health

concerns, and hunt critics in the town say villagers

are shunning it. Meat from pilot whales -- a type of

dolphin -- was taken off local school lunch menus in

October.

 

" The mayor says we've caused 100 million yen (US$1

million) in damages to the industry, but I don't know

how that's calculated, " said Junichiro Yamashita, a

city councilman spearheading the anti-hunt movement.

" They say the business is important for Taiji, but we

say that health is more important. "

 

Indeed, while animal rights arguments against the hunt

have fallen on deaf ears in Japan, the threat of

mercury contamination strikes a chord in a country

where food safety is rapidly becoming a paramount

public concern.

 

Though no mercury poisoning cases from dolphin meat

have been publicly documented in Taiji, such

contamination resonates loudly in Japan, where

thousands were killed or crippled by mercury poisoning

in Minamata in the 1950s and 60s. The poisoning was

triggered by massive dumping of industrial mercury

into the fishing grounds around the village in

southern Japan.

 

Taiji is one of several Japanese villages where

dolphins are hunted. The town this season has a

nationally set quota of 3,015, of a total national

quota of nearly 21,000. The actual take tends to be

about 30 percent lower than the quota, depending on

demand for the meat.

 

While other villages usually harpoon their quarry out

at sea, the particularly bloody killing methods in

Taiji have made the town a focal point of animal

rights activists worldwide.

 

The village resents the attention and accuses

outsiders of interfering with a hunting tradition of

hundreds of years. Standoffs between protesters and

hunters quickly boil over into arguments and threats.

The town erects barriers and hangs tarps to block

activists from photographing the kill, and daily hunts

can be canceled if foreigners are seen in town.

 

" No thank you, " said an official at the fisheries

union when approached for comment on the hunt. " You've

come at a bad time. "

 

The recent findings on mercury levels, however, have

given pause to many would-be consumers.

 

Tetsuya Endo, a researcher at the Health Sciences

University of Hokkaido, in northern Japan, has

co-authored numerous studies showing dolphin meat can

contain mercury at concentrations many times higher

than the 0.4 parts per million allowed by the Japanese

government for many types of fish.

 

The highest concentration he has found so far was 100

parts per million from a bottlenose dolphin -- a

species whose meat is butchered in Taiji.

 

" This ought to be investigated, " Endo said, calling

for a government probe into the dangers of eating

dolphin. " There are people who eat it a lot, and those

people could be suffering health effects. "

 

The threat of mercury contamination, however, failed

to cause a stir in this isolated village until

Yamashita, irked by the town's plans to build a 300

million yen (US$3 million) dolphin slaughterhouse and

spread the use of local dolphin meat in school

lunches, decided with allies to conduct their own

probe.

 

The results on tests of three locally bought pieces of

dolphin meat at a government-run lab confirm their

fears, he said.

 

The pieces of meat taken from pilot whales were all

many times the 0.4 parts per million threshold. One

piece logged 11 parts per million of mercury, and 2.6

parts per million of PCBs, an industrial pollutant

that Japanese regulations limit to 0.5.

 

Yamashita and his allies announced the results in a

handout distributed with local newspapers, and he

expanded his crusade by appearing at a news conference

in Tokyo for foreign reporters -- a move that angered

village elders and hunters.

 

" They said that if dolphin hunting disappears, then

Taiji will disappear, but I say it's important to look

at developing other industries, " he said. " They're

upset that I showed this to the outside world. "

 

The anti-hunt movement, however, faces substantial

hurdles.

 

The Taiji leadership -- only three of 10 councilmen

oppose the hunt -- is clinging to plans for the new

slaughterhouse, counting on sales of dolphin meat

outside the region, where the mercury concerns have

not spread because of lack of national media

attention. Captured dolphins are also sold to dolphin

aquariums in Japan and abroad, at substantial profit.

 

Taiji has powerful contacts at the national level.

Lawmaker Toshihiro Nikai, a top executive of the

long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party, is a native of

the prefecture where Taiji is located, and he recently

visited the village. Campaign posters of him can be

seen around town.

 

Tokyo -- which is also battling international

protesters over its whaling program on the high seas

-- is not getting involved in the dolphin dispute,

despite a Health Ministry survey in 2003 confirming

high levels of mercury in the mammals. The Fisheries

Agency in 2005 upgraded a 2-year-old advisory to urge

pregnant women not to eat dolphin more than once every

two months.

 

In any case, the 0.4 parts per million limit on

mercury does not apply to dolphin meat, and there are

no plans to strengthen the guidelines, officials said.

 

" We are aware that mercury content is particularly

high in dolphins, " said Yuichiro Ejima, a food safety

official at the Health Ministry. " But ... most

Japanese seldom eat the meat, except in some areas

where dolphins are caught traditionally. "

 

In Taiji and surrounding towns, where dolphin and

whale meat has been popular for many years, people are

loathe to discuss the dangers publicly, particularly

to outsiders. Many people questioned said dolphin meat

was delicious and that they knew nothing about the

mercury problem.

 

Word of the contamination has also not spread far

beyond the village.

 

Outside a supermarket selling pilot whale meat in

neighboring Katsuura, housewife and mother Michio

Higashi, 33, said she eats it during the hunting

season if she goes to her parents' home nearby, and

has even fed it to her two-year-old son in a stew.

 

" I knew that in general pregnant women shouldn't eat

too much seafood, " said Higashi, whose retired father

was once a whale meat cook at a hotel in Taiji. " But I

hadn't heard such a thing specifically about whale or

dolphin meat. "

 

Mainichi Japan January 31, 2008