February 5, 2013 — A report released in Tokyo by the International Fund for Animal Welfare shatters the justifications used by the Japanese government and the whaling industry to continue the slaughter of whales.
Of all the statistics, culled from official sources, that are cited in the International Fund for Animal Welfare's (IFAW) study "The Economics of Japanese Whaling," Dr. Ralf Sonntag, director of the IFAW's operations in Germany, says the one that shocked him the most was the sheer amount of taxpayers' money that had been sunk into an industry for a product that so few people want to buy.
"That was perhaps the most surprising thing for me," said Sonntag, who was in Tokyo for the launch of the study. "It's a figure around 400 million US dollars over the last 25 years and that's a lot of money.
"Really, that sort of money could have been spent in a far better way than on supporting an industry that could not survive without government backing."
Thanks to the support of the conservative members of the Japanese government and bureaucrats within the Japan Fisheries Agency, the whaling fleet is presently exploiting a loophole within the rules of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to operate in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.