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Whale meat back on menu in Japanese schools
last update: Sep 07, 2010 01:32 PM
From various articles: According to a survey released today, Japanese public schools are reintroducing whale meat in their lunch menus at low prices to expand consumption.
According to the survey, conducted by Kyodo News, 5,355 schools, or 18 per cent of public elementary and junior high schools nationwide offering lunches for students responded they had served whale meat in their lunches at least once in fiscal 2009 through March 2010.
The Institute of Cetacean Research, which undertakes the government’s research whaling, provided whale meat to local municipalities for school lunch use at one-third of the market price. The survey said that whale meat is made available as some whaling towns are trying to pass on traditional food culture to children.
Japan, which wants to resume commercial whaling, is hoping to increase consumption of whale meat as meat stocks of whales captured by the institute in its research mission have piled up to around 4,000 tons.
At the peak of the whaling, the annual amount of meat supplied in Japan totaled around 220,000 tons in 1962, but plunged sharply to around 1,000 tons in the 1990s after an international ban on commercial whaling was introduced in the 1980s, which resulted that whale meat menus, which often appeared in school lunches in the 1970s, disappeared.
Read more:
The Hindu, 5th September 2010
Japan Times, 4th September 2010
Philippines News.Net, 5th September 2010
