ast
year, IWMC and other sustainable use organizations witnessed something new in
the unforgiving rhetoric of no-use groups and anti-whaling nations. This was the
pushing by various governments to outlaw traditional diets.
In most aspects, all countries’ individual governments are sovereign in
their own right. That at least is an accepted principle of international law
since the Peace of Westphalia. But it needs to be asked: "Is it in the
power of individual governments to make decisions on various cultures
traditional ways, including diet, that will only lead to the extinction of that
particular culture?"
Naturally, it is a rhetorical question. Cultural bias and ethnic prejudice
often find expressions in ways other than crass and insulting verbal racial
slurs. Unfortunately, this is one of the ways.
One example is that at last year’s meeting of the International Whaling
Commission in Adelaide, four scientists pronounced cetacean food products found
on Japanese grocery shelves "contaminated" with heavy metals and other
dangerous substances and called for the Japanese Government to immediately ban
the sales of all cetacean products in that country.
The attempt to outlaw whale products as a health hazard was a clever move,
but deliberately dishonest.
Among those substances found in the Japanese consumer products were highly
toxic heavy metals such as mercury, as well as DDT, PCBs, HCH, dieldrin and
chlordane. However, the four researchers did not find any evidence that
consuming those products lead to health problems. In fact, a six-year study by
more than 80 medical and biological specialist on the health effects on Canadian
Arctic citizens of consuming such "contaminated" marine mammal flesh
showed the health benefits of consuming marine food far outweigh the
"potential" negative consequences. The Canadian Government carried out
this study.
But the scientists’ survey, paid for by environmental organizations, of
grocery items in Japan was not a health survey; it was an inventory of
compounds. The researchers failed to mention that recent research shows that
selenium, a beneficial element found in marine mammals, counters the toxicity of
mercury.
The scientists laboring to outlaw whale meat from Japanese food stores also
neglected the University of California cancer study that found the average cup
of coffee to contain over 1000 different chemicals, more than 500 of which are
known causes of cancer in laboratory animals. Not to forget the Utah State
University study of well-educated U.S. households that practice extremely
unsanitary behavior in their own kitchens, behavior linked to food poisoning
affecting some 76 million Americans annually. Ever heard of food poisoning in
the Arctic?
It is time these ludicrous surveys, studies, research results were seen for
what they are. Manipulations of the worst kind that only lead to the ruin of
communities and cultures who live by the bounty of the sea. 
