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Comment by SapporoChris | Hacker News Reader

Please keep in mind, Japanese consider cetaceans just another fish. They simply don't understand all the anti-whaling rhetoric.

The other thing to keep in mind is the demand for whale meat has sharply decreased. Japanese would rather eat beef. If you want to eliminate whaling, do so with economic tools. I.e. cheap beef.

Lastly, if you find you are anti-whaling but love a juicy steak, I consider you a hypocrite. They're both mammals. I've never seen any conclusive evidence that whales are any better than cattle. All the 'intelligent' behavior I've ever seen reported of is comparable to other animals 'intelligent' behavior that most have no issues of eating.

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> Japanese consider cetaceans just another fish.

And Japanese are short, can't speak English, too ?

We don't eat whale at home, never have, nobody we know eats whale, neither can you see whale on display as a matter of course around you in Japan. Sure, you can find it if you want it. Also, even children as a rule can usually explain what a whale is, and how is different compared to, say, tuna or mackerel. Schools are a wonderful thing.

That said, your other point is quite apropos on the massive hypocrisy in general when it comes to meat and fish consumption.

The horrific process that brings chicken or beef to people's plates would be something to consider way before looking at whaling.

( Edit : Not vegetarian or vegan, by the way. )

( Edit 2 : And for clarity's sake : Not in favour of whaling for any reason, myself. )

Do you know if maybe the majority of whale is then exported to other countries, with a "made in japan" / japanese quality label on it?

Don't have any specific figures, don't know. There isn't that much whale to deal with to begin with, it is highly regulated as already explained in another comment. We'll see if this whaling 'restart' brings changes to that -- or if it even lasts.

Seems like political nationalistic posturing from a government that's done a number of things in this regard, more than anything else. There are no real economic ( or gastronomical ) reasons to it that I can see.

I've never gotten the impression that a majority of Japanese support whaling. I don't think I've ever met someone who was in favour of it; mostly Japanese seem ambiguous about it, and some against.

Environmentalism is fairly strong in Japan though. Is there so little political opposition to whaling?

There is little political opposition to the present government, which explains why a leader with such lousy support among the population at large ( Abe's administration has been riddled in corruption scandals almost non-stop, and has been hovering between a 30% and at best 50% in polls ) is about to become the longest serving Prime Minister.

The opposition is fragmented, weak in all respects, hasn't had a plan when in power, doesn't have one now, was mercilessly attacked when in power because of their handling of Fukushima among other things, and people have no real choice when it comes to voting.

Yuriko Koike took Tokyo Metropolis by storm and raised the prospect of a strong alternative political force to the ever in power LDP and the broken opposition, but then quickly fizzled out and renounced national ambitions.

This new whaling push seems to be just a political statement from the Abe administration, in essence.

I think this whole argument will be largely solved when meat substitute (tasty protein) is synthesized from non-animal products. I heard of a company that did that quite successfully but I don't know if they will be able to scale all that well. Anyhow - it seems that this is an issue that will be resolved by engineering a solution out of it.

Not sure that's the proper way though. I think that such big scale moral issues are something of a species test (our species). Engineering our way out of the moral argument feels like cheating and actually might backpedal our collective ability to create consensus and solve problems as a society.

Moral relativism between species is an endless logic labyrinth. For instance, there are profoundly more impactful conservation and ecosystem role considerations for wild whales compared to domestic cows.

Your free market solution is fantastical, and your supposition that it is more effective than the largely successful international whaling treaties even more so.

> They're both mammals.

Whales are not domesticated. They are not farmed. Cattle are not threatened with extinction.

What does domestication or farming have to do with anything.

Whaling is a highly regulated industry in Japan, they have no interest in hunting animals to extinction. "Each year, 62 Baird's beaked whales are hunted commercially in Japan, with the meat sold for human consumption."

"Estimates for Baird's are of the order of 30,000 individuals." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_beaked_whale

More interesting, the meat contains high levels of mercury and PCBs. Just lost my interest in eating it...

International anti-whaling treaties were signed precisely because whales were being hunted to extinction.

> What does domestication or farming have to do with anything.

Pretty much everything? You can't really dismiss the parent with: "Naw. I'd rather argue against something you didn't claim". I also hold the impression that the bigger concern with Whales is a question of hunting them to extinction, not a matter of relative intelligence.

Fortunately, you do actually end up addressing it anyway; I have no idea if 30,000 is a lot, but if it can really be sustainable fine, eat em.

But that just reenforces the idea that a domesticated, farmed population would remove most non-vegan people's concerns.

Also note that the Minke whales that are being whaled, are not threatened with extinction. In fact, they are classified as "least concern".

So, let's hunt them to make sure they get back into a more pressing category? Seems like a bad idea.

This is not binary. It is fully possible to hunt them to keep the population stable. It is not a bad idea at all as long as it is properly regulated.

I had the same argument with a friend a few days ago, only it was centered around the brutal and senseless (IMHO) slaughter of pilot whales in Faroe Islands. There is a simple answer why it is much worse from an ethical standpoint to murder an intelligent sea mammal versus killing a cow and it is based on how that organism came to be in the first place. Cow was there as a result of intentional breeding. It was created in the first place by humans/industry to be eaten (we can argue on how brutal that is in itself but let's not be sidetracked by it for now). Sea mammals were there independently of human actions - and if anything we destroy and downgrade their environment and standard of living implicitly with a myriad of ways. So - there you go. It is much more wrong to kill whales than killing cows. And it is extra wrong to do it while nobody really needs to for survival.

> Please keep in mind, Japanese consider cetaceans just another fish. They simply don't understand all the anti-whaling rhetoric.

I am a Japanese (so sorry for bad English) and I think this is true. It does NOT mean we don't understand whales are mammals. We all understand that fishes and mammals are taxonomically very different. We eat many kinds of animals underwater like fishes, shellfishes, crustacean, eels, octopuses, etc. Whales are one of them.

We should not eat whales because whales are intelligent? There are many evidence that octopuses have very high intelligence.

Because whales are mammals and humans are mammals? We (including non-Japanese) eat pigs and cattles, which are mammals.

Additionally, this is my personal opinion, I think "the animals which have higher intelligence should not be eaten" is not a common sense in Japan. Intelligence is not a only value of creatures.

You make Japanese people sound stupid...of course they understand. They simply choose to ignore it.

Surely whales r not cheaper than chicken???!!!

Is tuna cheaper than chicken? Is that why they look ready to fish it to extinction?

Some may oppose whaling on ethical grounds. I don't. But I thought the problem was the declining whale population.

The difference is we have a well-established process for making more cows. We don't have a similar process for whales so if we fuck up their population, we won't be able to make more whales.

Except cattle are herded and comercially farmed while whales aren't. I'd much rather eat beef, thank you. Your solution for whale meat demand offset is brilliant otherwise.

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