MUCH food labelled as whalemeat in Japan is actually from dolphins and porpoises, and exceeds the government鈥檚 legal limit for mercury.
That is the claim of the anti-whaling Environmental Investigation Agency, based in London and Washington DC. By releasing its report ahead of next week鈥檚 meeting of the International Whaling Commission in Berlin, the EIA hopes to highlight the dangers of eating whalemeat and undermine Japan鈥檚 perennial attempts to resume commercial whaling.
Japan is currently allowed to sell meat from whales caught as part of its 鈥渟cientific research programme鈥�. Fishermen also sell meat from smaller, toothed cetaceans, such as porpoises and dolphins, which are not covered by the international ban. Even though it is illegal to mislabel meat, DNA analysis of 17 鈥渨hale鈥� products purchased in supermarkets by EIA investigators in 2001 revealed that 12 were from porpoises and dolphins.
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Another survey of 58 whale products bought throughout Japan between 2001 and early 2003 showed that 67 per cent had mercury concentrations higher than the government鈥檚 limit of 0.4 parts per million. The average level was five times that, at 2 ppm. Levels of methyl mercury, a more toxic form, were also high, with concentrations exceeding the legal limit in half the samples. The average level found was four times the legal maximum, and one bottlenose dolphin had levels 36 times as high. Baleen whales such as minke, which eat plankton, had far lower mercury levels than fish-eating whales, though not all tests were completed in time for the report.
鈥淥ne of the shocking things is the sheer number of samples exceeding the government鈥檚 limits,鈥� says the study鈥檚 author, Clare Perry. 鈥淭here are lots of people eating this stuff.鈥�
The pro-whaling Institute of Cetacean Research in Tokyo rejects the claims. Sixty per cent of the whalemeat sold in Japan is from minke whales, 鈥渢he cleanest meat one can find鈥�, says spokesman Dan Goodman. He adds that government tests show that only a small proportion of meat from the smaller cetaceans exceeds the limit. But Perry claims that catch figures suggest minke meat accounts for at most 35 per cent of all the cetacean meat sold.
The mercury tests were done by Tetsuya Endo鈥檚 team at the Health Sciences University of Hokkaido. In tests on a smaller range of samples last year, the team also found high levels of mercury contamination in whale and dolphin meat from supermarkets. One sample was an astonishing 5000 times over the government鈥檚 limit (New 杏吧原创, 8 June 2002, p 17).