SDHF Newsletter No.297 Counting the Blessing of Whales No.5

Counting the Blessing of Whales:
Insights from a Chopsticks-Wielding Patriot
Koizumi Takeo
Series No.5: Chapter 4
Three Reasons Anti-Whaling Nations Are Against The Resumption of Whaling

January 26, 2021

The moratorium (suspension) of commercial whaling adopted by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) had a rider that the suspension needed to be reviewed by 1990, at the latest—and this has been scrupulously ignored. The resumption of commercial whaling is nowhere in sight and there are several reasons for this.
One reason for this is the political-economic game that the anti-whaling countries–the US, Australia, and New Zealand–play, in that they are also major exporters of beef and pork. Their primary motivation is the sale of meat.
One other reason is that whales are a convenient symbol of all environmental issues. Whales are the biggest mammals on earth. They flip their tails, females signal to their offspring and swim long distances. When people see whales, they reflexively respond with: “Eating such nice creatures is cruel and pitiful!” Naturally this is used as propaganda by anti-whaling countries to signal their “commitment” to the environment. This tactic was in fact used by the US during the Vietnam War—to distract the rest of the world from the horrible atrocities committed by the US military against the Vietnamese people.
Lastly, racism plays a role in the objection to whaling. For example, Yamamoto Shichihei stated in his book, The Japanese and Americans:
Racist thinking, “Japanese → whale killer → bad people”, has now spread to children.
At the same time, why do “wildlife conservationists” turn a blind eye to the slaughter of cows and pigs but oppose whale hunting? As shown in Chapter 3, the recent whale hunting ban has led to a significant decline in walleye pollacks, Pacific sauries, and squid—all because there are more whales. Saving whales does nothing for “resource security”.
Eating whales, compared to beef, is more ecologically friendly. Consider the following:
*To obtain 1 kcal of whale: 1 kcal of fuel is needed.
*To obtain 1 kcal of beef: 120 kcal of grain is needed.
*To produce 1 kcal of grain (wheat): 10 kcal of fuel is needed.
Thus, to obtain 1 kcal of beef, 1200 kcal of fuel is needed: whale meat is 1,200 times more ecologically efficient than beef.

URL: https://www.sdh-fact.com/book-article/1637/
PDF: https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL/Counting-4e.pdf

We welcome questions.

MOTEKI Hiromichi, Acting Chairman
for KASE Hideaki, Chairman
Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact