In February, EIA purchased dog food products from supermarkets in Shizuoka and Otsuchi, Japan. DNA analysis showed that the dried dog food from Shizuoka contained Antarctic minke and a packaged dog food product purchased in Otsuchi contained dolphin DNA. The new method for DNA analysis of highly processed products, which was used to analyze fertilizer and pet food samples, was presented to the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) at this year’s annual meeting. Based in London and Washington, DC, the Environmental Investigation Agency, along with the UK based Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, and The Humane Society of the United States, released evidence of the whale meat in pet food at last week’s IWC annual meeting.
“The fact that Japan is using whale meat for pet foods totally invalidates Japan’s attempts to legitimize and increase their catches,” said Clare Perry of the Environmental Investigation Agency. Japanese whaling fleets take a self- imposed quota of 440 minke whales in the Southern Ocean and 440 minkes in the North Pacific each year in addition to dozens of sperm, sei, and Bryde’s whales – all as part of the scientific research whaling allowed under the International Whaling Commission (IWC) rules.
The IWC requires that all meat left after research is finished must be utilized, not discarded. At the IWC meeting, Japan attempted to win a quota of whales for coastal communities, but their bid was defeated. Sue Fisher of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society said, “We hear the same rhetoric year after year about distressed coastal whaling communities, and now we find that whales are being used as pet food.”
More than 400,000 dolphins, porpoises, and small whales have been killed in Japanese waters in the last 20 years, the three organizations estimate. The whale meat, whether consumed by humans or animals, will burden their bodies with a toxic load of mercury. Analysis of meat from toothed whales sold for human consumption in Japan, recently published by Japanese researchers, revealed that 100 percent of these products exceeded the allowed levels for mercury content.