Meow to arms: please help end annual dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan

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We love our kitties, and we love their purrs, chuffs, quirks, psychosis and all. That is what being family is about. Much as we cannot bear the thought of being apart from family, we would not wish anyone to be separated from theirs. This is an appeal for intensely family-centred non-kitties who need help. And we’re asking kitty mums and dads because you’ve shown yourselves to be compassionate and passionate. So we’re asking you to help by doing one of the following:

• If you don’t have time to continue reading, PLEASE GO HERE IMMEDIATELY, thank you very much
• Otherwise, please bear with us as we explain some background and tell you our reasons for appealing to you.

By now, visitors to tec probably have an inkling that beyond the kitty snugglecore us minions purvey (or try to), we also draw attention to kitty problems and other cutsies and wildlife face, whether here or out there in the world and the help they need.

Beyond the lack of fur, watery homes, and IQ differentials (debatable to some), dolphins are one of the most kitty-like in their fiery focus on fun and food. Life seems a forever funival to dolphins, much like the swishing toy, which goes nowhere, is the kitty’s perpetual fascination. But whales and dolphins have stronger sense of family, often maintaining relationships between parents and offspring, siblings, cousins, aunties, uncles. Dolphins take it one step further, living in multi-generation family groups called pods.

So imagine what it is like for them when a whale is harpooned (often dying slowly by drowning), or dolphins herded into a cove to be slowly killed over a few days, and the survivors fished out from the carnage and sold to entertain people.

Whale and dolphin killing sunders the close-knit cetacean families, and hinders the rehabilitation of whale numbers, which were hunted almost to extinction in the 1970s. For dolphins, it also feeds and fuels the public interest for dolphin entertainment shows (which feature wild-captured dolphins who, if they survive the trauma of capture and the horrors of witnessing their families being killed, usually live only another 2-3 wretched years). Dolphins are also labelled as whale meat. The public and even citizens of the whale killing nations are generally ignorant of these pathetic facts.

Us minions believe whale killing and dolphin slaughter are things that are barbaric, antiquated and have no place in modern society.

However, there seems to be no real progress to the efforts to permanently stop the annual wanton waste of life… until the Cove this year, a documentary-movie with a message, and a noble mission.

For once, something managed to halt temporarily the annual dolphin slaughter season in Taiji, Japan. This was thanks to the intense scrutiny and interest the move generated. To the point that the Japanese media, which had never wanted to talk about the shame that is Taiji’s annual hunt, also went to Taiji and were showed the movie!

In no small part, Taiji’s discretion seemed to stem from the suspension of sister-city ties by Broomed Australia too. However, the residents of Broome did not have an easy time of it even from fellow Australians. They have bravely stood their ground… until now.

Please encourage them to continue the course – they were doing the right thing but now it could unravel because they reversed their decision!

Can there be hope for the whales and dolphins who swim in the Sea of Japan and everywhere else within the Japanese whaling fleet‘s reach? Mr Ishii and Ric O’Barry’s stories gives us hope. Mr Ishii, a dolphin fisherman who hunted dolphins as his fathers did before him, now runs a whale and dolphin watching tour outfit. Mr Ishii is not the only who has taken the brave step of speaking up and acting against something he understood to be wrong. But there is a long way to go, despite the benefits of keeping whales and dolphins alive. The Mr Ishiis and Ric O’Barrys of this world can’t do it alone. Please click here and help them.

Thank you.

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Japan Taiji dolphin slaughter – good news for 1 Sep at least

How wonderful for the dolphins, at least for 1 day.

Urgent Update from Taiji: September 1, 2009, A Good Day for Dolphins
Posted by Guest Contributor on September 1, 2009 at 2:05 pm

Editor’s Note: This piece was written by guest contributor Richard O’Barry of the Save Japan Dolphins Coalition.

As TakePart reported earlier this week, O’Barry is currently in Taiji, Japan with European and Japanese journalists in anticipation of the annual dolphin slaughter that usually takes place the first week of September.

Today is September 1st, the first day of the dolphin slaughter season in Japan. But when I arrived today by bus from Kansai Airport with media representatives from all over the world, the notorious Cove from the movie was empty. There were no dolphin killers in sight.

So today is a very good day for dolphins!

I vowed to be back in Taiji when the dolphin killing began. I’ve often been here alone, or accompanied by a few environmentalists. Sometimes, I was able to talk a major media organization into sending someone.

But the people of Japan never learned about the dolphin slaughter, because none of the media in Japan (with the exception of the excellent Japan Times) have ever sent reporters to the killing Cove. Until today!

… click here to continue reading

Imagine if the same were to happen for Singapore’s community cats and dogs – that celebrities and journalists take an interest in, and film pest-control round-ups of cats and dogs, citizen trapping and film the euthanesia process anmd conditions in AVA. Then maybe people will wake up and look real hard at the more humane ways in dealing with stray cats.

The need to spread the word about how Singapore deals with community cats and dogs looks to be gaining urgency, when even Town Council general managers think they are merely despatched to the AVA for “assistance“. What sort of assistance did the TC bigwigs expect from AVA? Housing grants or rights, maybe to eke out a living on some unnamed offshore island nobody cares about? Time to pull the cotton away from those blinkered eyes. Where’s the LAW?

REFERENCE

• Weekend Movie Choice: The Cove
• The Australian sister city of Taiji, the Shire of Broome in Western Australia, recently suspended its sister city status until the killing of thousands of dolphins is ended.
  • Broome has the Power to Cease the Dolphin Killings in Taiji
  • Sea Shepherd Calls Australians to Respect Broome’s Japanese Families and Their Heritage

(PS: I’ve promised furry-do… no worries, it’s to come)

くそっ、私の黒鮪刺身はどこにありますか？!

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DAMN, where’s my bluefin tuna sashimi?! くそっ、私の黒鮪刺身はどこにありますか？! (Kusou, watashi no kuro maguro sashimi wa doko ni arimasu ka?!)

From the Mediterranean to Japan, the bluefin tuna is being fished and eaten into extinction.

There are a few species of bluefin tuna, and all of them are in danger disappearing forever.

The species in the greatest danger of slipping into extinction is the western north Atlantic population (stock) of bluefin tuna. Thanks to 4 decades of overfishing, it has been driven to just 3% of its 1960 or pre-longlining abundance – a decline of 97%…
-“Atlantic Bluefin Tuna – Severity of Decline and its Causes“, bigmarinefish.com

Bluefin tuna sashimi is a delicacy the world over, wherever fanciers of Japanese live. This is a phenomenon ignited in the 1970s, and it may soon burn out, not because of waning demand but because demand is fueling the bluefin’s road to oblivion.

The hunting of highly valued animals into oblivion is a symptom of human foolishness that many consign to the unenlightened past, like the 19th century, when bird species were wiped out for feathered hats and bison were decimated for sport. But the slaughter of the giant bluefin tuna is happening now.
– The Bluefin Slaughter, New York Times

Before it got reduced to a raw morsel of gourmet ecstasy, the bluefin is a living fish, one of the largest fish apart from sharks (sharks are soft-boned or cartilaginous, while most other fishes including the tuna are bony fish). The tuna’s fishy biology is rare, for it’s a warm-blooded fast swimming fish, the Lamborghini of the seas. Like those gas-guzzling monsters, bluefins are fantastical swimmers capable of hitting 70kmh, traversing the oceans from north to south, east to west, several times a year. They are highly evolved fish, advanced in design, with amazing navigation systems, able to locate prey with their sonar, but closing in with their large eyes. They can even dive down to almost 1000m deep. And like the supercars, these superfish have voracious appetites, requiring 25 kilos of prey to gain 1 kilo of weight. Their average lifespan is 15 – 30 years, and it takes them up to 12 years to go from puny microscopic larvae carried along by currents to sexually mature, sleek giants averaging 2m in length.

It seems like apart from growing up quickly, there’s nothing this beautiful fish can’t do, but it cannot escape extinction if people insist on eating them off the face of the earth.

Stop the gluttony: save the bluefin tuna from extinction! 大食家の貪欲を止めてください：黒鮪を絶滅から救ってください！ (taishyokuka no donyoku wo yamete kudasai: kuro maguro wo zemmei kara sukutte kudasai!)

Tuna looks like this to most people – the beginning of sushi, the ignomy of a frozen piece of multilated meat. But it is the end of life, or a parodic prophesy of the bluefin’s future, driven by human greed and gluttony

As Prince Albert, Monaco’s ruler, wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

The forces of selfishness and stupidity that wiped out the great whales and the northern cod in the last century are steaming ahead at full speed… The bluefin tuna is as endangered as the giant panda and the white rhino.” Unless a ban is enforced almost immediately, the only examples of the species could be found in large aquariums.

Is it too pessimistic a view? It doesn’t seem to be, given this typical of the editorials on the state of things:

… what was once known as the common tunny has, over the past few decades, come to be at serious risk of extinction, thanks to overfishing driven by demand from Japan, where bluefin tuna are considered a delicacy and are used in sushi and sashimi.

Efforts to protect the species have floundered.
–  So long, and thanks for all the fish, Economist.com

How did it come to this?

From Horse Mackerel to Sushi

The bluefin was not always considered a delicacy. In the early 1900s the fish was known

as “horse mackerel,” and its red, strong-flavored flesh was considered suitable fare only for dogs and cats. Nevertheless, big-game fishers off New Jersey and Nova Scotia targeted the bluefin because these powerful fish were considered worthy opponents… Although swordfish were certainly considered edible, tuna and marlin were thought of as strictly objects of the hunt. The bluefin did not become valuable as a food fish until the latter half of the 20th century, when sushi began to appear on menus around the globe.
– The Bluefin Tuna in Peril, Scientific American

Yes, sport fishing is a culprit along with sushi gobblers, but the bulk of culpability lies with the sushi and sashimi lovers.

Supplying tonnes of tuna means mass fishing techniques, which are indiscriminatory about what gets snared. Non-target species like birds, turtles, sharks, whales, dolphins, seals, and other fish species become by-catch, sacrificed needlessly.

… long-line fleets are fishing blind, with little or no understanding of their devastating impact on threatened species,’ says Dr Simon Cripps, Director of WWF’s Global Marine Programme. ‘Responsible countries must urgently implement measures to dramatically reduce the death toll.’ The new report exposes ten years of inaction by members of the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna (CCSBT), and calls for reform measures to be agreed at their annual meeting in Australia next week to stem the catch of endangered wildlife and reduce chronic overfishing.
–  Southern Bluefin Tuna fleets endanger a wide variety of wildlife, warns WWF

Take positive action before it’s too late for regrets 悔悟のために遅すぎである前に、確かな行動をとってください (Kaigo no tame ni susugi de aru maini, tashika na koudou wo totte kudasai>

Can you imagine a day where the bluefin tuna has come to the end of the line? A day where there’s no fish? Bluefins are to fishes what whales are to cetaceans.

But for the diehard fan of maguro, especially otoro, the question burning the tastebuds and churning the gastric juices in the guts must be : Is this the end of sushi?

Sushi connoisseurs tend to be obsessive folks – I know because I am one. If we think we must sacrifice good sushi to save the bluefin, we may just as well keep eating bluefin.
– Better sushi, but without bluefin tuna, The Christian Science Monitor

Old habits die hard, but what about older habits that were buried by the old habits?

The people who come to my dinners are American sushi eaters ready to experience and understand a completely authentic Japanese meal….

And guess what? There’s no bluefin on the plate. There’s no toro, no hamachi, no unagi, and no fatty salmon. None of these usual suspects of today’s global sushi business are part of the traditional sushi lineage. In fact, until just a few decades ago the Japanese considered tuna a garbage fish.

It wasn’t until after World War II, when the Japanese started eating a more Westernized diet, with red meat and fattier cuts of it, that the bluefin fad began. And it was a fad practically invented by Japanese airlines, so they could load their international flights with pricey cargo.
– Better sushi, but without bluefin tuna, The Christian Science Monitor

How do you kick an old habit, one that is harmful? By looking further back to when things were better, more sustainable.

A Japanese chef named Hajime Sato did what celebrity chef Matsuhisa has not had the wisdom to do. With the help of a seafood conservation expert named Casson Trenor, Chef Sato converted his sushi bar, Mashiko, to an entirely sustainable menu….

Sato no longer serves bluefin. And he’s thrilled. “I found probably 20 more fish that no one uses for sushi anymore,” he says. “My restaurant has so much more different fish that I can’t fit them all into the new menu.”

Sushi doesn’t need to die because the bluefin is endangered. With our help, sushi can be reborn – better than ever.
– Better sushi, but without bluefin tuna, The Christian Science Monitor

Some may point to farming as a way out. But no, it is really another farcical false hope.

It may not be  too late to do the right thing and keep the legacy meant for our future generations intact, a LIVING planet filled with the amazing bluefin and its fellow dwellers of the deep.

Yet even if the trade in bluefin tuna were to be halted completely, there would be no guarantee that the species would recover. Experience with other fisheries, such as the collapse of the cod population of the Grand Banks off Newfoundland in 1992, has shown that the dynamics of an ecosystem can change when a top predator is removed completely. Fifteen years later, the northern cod stock has not recovered.
–  So long, and thanks for all the fish, Economist.com

(Incidentally, the intensification of the annual Canadian seal slaughter used the cod fisheries’ collapse as its excuse. Ref  “Scientific Study – my fish!“)

Efforts to study and understand the bluefin tuna are underway. In fact, 1 scientist has said:

“To say there’s not enough science to tell us whether we need to protect the last few fish that are trying to breed on our side of the ocean, that is just nonsensical,” he said. “I believe that is illegal. The law requires better stewardship than [government officials] sitting on their hands and doing nothing.”
– Advocates Hope Science Can Save a Big Tuna, Washington Post

But we must bear in mind that even if the bluefin is saved, it still does mean we can feed the bluefin to our feckless appetites again anytime soon:

At the moment bluefin tuna has no protection under Cites, the only global body with the power to limit or ban international trade in endangered species.

If bluefin tuna are given protected status at the meeting in Qatar next March the sale of the fish on international markets would be banned although it could still be sold locally.

Such a measure would eliminate the main cause of over-fishing: the strong demand for the delicacy as sushi and sashimi in countries such as Japan and the United States.
– EU considering bluefin tuna protection

It’s not just Japan (but even Japanese think tank are urging Japanese to spare the bluefin). Bluefin tuna are missing from Danish waters since the 1960s, the annual mattanza in Sicily. In fact, it’s not just tuna that’s got problems.

No nation can claim innocence. No one. Even in tiny lawful Singapore, illegal food encounters are not unheard of.

Though there seems to be hope, this constant yo-yoing between austerity and glut cannot be good. Can we actually learn? The insidious food, inc has its claws in every aspect of the human food chain, whether on land or in the seas, and consumers are not guiltless in the concocting of this recipe for disaster. The important thing is for consumers, you and me, to realise what we’re doing (or not) with our habits, and do the right thing.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Mercury Poisoning: People who eat a lot of fish may run health risk. (Latest “HOT” victim – Jeremy Piven)

Problems for Sharks and Dolphins:

All the Tuna you buy comes from wild fish, some caught using vast purse-seine nets to scoop them out of the sea, and some from lines of baited hooks many miles long. Unfortunately these methods catch many other creatures at the same time, including sharks. Longlines around New Zealand are said to have caught 450,000 blue sharks in 10 years!

And there are serious problems for Dolphins. Follow these two links to start researching them. Dolphins may be caught at the same time, or Dolphin mothers may be separated from their young.

Weekend Movie Choice: The Cove

[NOTE: Any comments in Japanese will not have any response from me. The Japanese title and section headings are to pique interest only. While I have studied Japanese, it was a long time ago – but with thanks to the internet, it was a easy task to get translations.]

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Who stands up to the whale killers?

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The Cove speaks about dolphins and the horrific things we do to them for our selfish ends. But it is not just the dolphins or bluefin tuna.

And now once again we are in the vast and remote Southern Oceans in search of the elusive whale killing fleet from Japan. How will we find them? The Australian government knows where they are but they’re not talking for fear of offending Japan. The United States Department of Naval Intelligence is monitoring our movements and relaying those movements to the Japanese whalers. The Japanese whalers have the full support of their government and military to track our movements. Even my old alma mater Greenpeace is not being cooperative but then again Bob Hunter and all my old shipmates who were once at the Greenpeace helm are regrettably no longer there.

From The Art of Finding Whalers, Commentary by Captain Paul Watson

Sometimes uncomfortable messages need to be delivered creatively to get people thinking. The music video for the Modest Mouse song, “King Rat“, directed by the late Heath Ledger, is one such creative message. It is fascinating. Allegory brought to its perverse ultimate outcome. What is its link to whale killing? Simply this: It sums up the situation for the whales well, and is factually fiction.

Just as disturbing: Is “Pink Gold” Coming To Your Local Grocery Store Soon?

Bad news abound for the whales: Japan is the leader of the whale killing pack. Iceland, which restarted its whale slaughtering pogrom 2006, then halted it in 2007, has resumed killing whale killing in 2008. Denmark has always maintained its annual pilot whale slaughter in the Faeroe Islands, Norway has been actively killing whales, like Japan. And padawan of the Japanese whale killers:  St. Lucia, St. Vincent & The Grenadines

MORE REFERENCE

– Save the whales at sea, too

– Most dolphin slaughter/capture (for aquariums and whatnots) is thought to occur in a tiny village called Taiji. Here’s links by credible and respected outfits on it:
– http://www.seashepherd.org/dolphins/sea-shepherd-in-taiji.html
– http://www.savejapandolphins.org/
– http://www.wdcs.org/stop/captivity/index.php

For ref, click here for a recent article about the link between the dolphin massacre in Japan and Swim-with-Dolphins programs in the UK.

Sadly: a fresh dolphin massacre, not in Japan, but the coasts of a country on the other side of the world, touristy Brazil

I believe the future IRs of Singapore will weigh in with their own contributions to the dolphin murders too, given their grand plans for marine-themes. And I’m certainly not happy about that.

As for eating dolphin, or eating dolphin-disguised-as-whale, click here for some facts about mercury poisoning in dolphin meat.

Regarding the oft-cited excuse that it is tradition, it’s just so much bullshit:
– http://www.seashepherd.org/editorials/editorial_060627_1.html
– local article: http://calsifer.wordpress.com/2006/06/24/today-20060624-scientific-study-my-fish/

Up-to-date whaling news can be found here. Out of that, worth a  highlight are articles related to the IWC meeting last year and this.

The gist is that Japan is buying votes on the IWC council to make it legal to commercially kill whales again. In this, it is not alone – Norway and Iceland hold up the other two axes of whale murders. Japan buys out countries like Grenada, Fiji, Carribean nations to vote with it. Holiday destinations. Japan has achieved several coup-d’tat:eg land-locked desertland, Mongolia has joined the party on Japsn’s side. To say that is very disturbing is understating the gravity of the situation.

For a list of IWC member nations, which really does comprise a few surprises, and the breakdown of the votes, view this: http://www.seashepherd.org/news/media_060619_1.html

The next time people go diving, snorkelling or just hoilday in hot tourist spots, I really hope they’ll give some thought to where their tourist goes… and to send letters to trade/tour reps of Japan’s whaling-cronies and tell them exactly why these countries aren’t getting their tourist dollars while they vote with Japan on its whale murder agenda. Jut as Belize, Japanese voting crony, was reined in by a conscientious pillar of the local society in 2006. There are friends, and then there are friends.

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Weekend Movie Choice: The Cove

The Cove: an evocation of peace, quiet, a secret paradise.

But this particular film, an award winning one no less, shows the world the secrets a cove in Japan harbours. It is about life and death – the blithe living of wildlife and a nonchalant greed that not only kills but destroys families in the process.

The review in TODAY sums it up well:

Director Louie Psihoyos and his team’s dangerous mission to document the slaughter of dolphins in a Japanese town is presented alongside the story of Richard O’Barry, who was the dolphin trainer for the TV show Flipper in the ’60s, and how his personal experiences with dolphins led him to crusade against keeping these mammals in captivity….

Of course, dolphin torture is only a symptom of a larger malaise: This film more or less represents all that is wrong with the world today. It’s requisite viewing for anyone with a social conscience.

Part of the movie features footage of an on-site protest by a group of surfers, including some celebrities, last October.

More review listed here.

Check out the movie’s homepage, and sign up for the campaign (bottom of the page).

ADDITIONAL REF
Captive animals in Singapore

Don’t forget the whale sharks that Resort World Sands originally intended to bring in. They are free from Resorts World now, but the IR still intends to bring in dolphins, who will not arrive under happy circumstances, despite their smiley faces.

Also, please also help Sammy, the whale shark being held captive in an integrated resort in Dubai, and whose story helped fanned support against Resort World’s plans.

Fish food

Are you a maguro otoro sashimi fan? Please read this: くそっ、私の黒鮪刺身はどこにありますか？! (DAMN, where’s my bluefin tuna sashimi?!)

Sydney’s humpback whale calf euthanased

Sydney named* the lost calf… but ultimately he still died, yesterday morning: Humpback whale calf Colin euthanased. Click the link to read, there are details on the arguments for and against further attempts to save Colin, and links to debates on whether it was necessary to end little Colin’s life by human committee.

This is a surprisingly turn given the upbeat tone of articles like this, and reports of the military’s willingness to assist in rescue efforts, just hours earlier.

Colin’s case has also sparked some possible controversy… namely:

… an international law professor says it may be illegal for authorities to euthanise the abandoned calf.

Professor Donald Rothwell from the Australian National University says there is no provision or precedent under NSW law to put down the protected species.

He says an order could be possibly be granted under the NSW National Parks Act, but that would send the wrong message to the international community about whale conservation.

“One of the important issues which should cause concerns here is that humpback whales are the whales that Australia has particularly taken a strong position with in terms of their protection and conservation at the international level,” he said.

“I think the Japanese would view with some interest Australia granting a permit to actually legally kill a whale that’s in Australian waters.”

(source)

I would hate to see Colin’s tragedy open that can of worms to the benefit of his species’ killers.

EDIT: * Colin’s autopsy reveals him to be a her, and now she’s been renamed Collette, though it’s going to make scant difference to her.

Sydney’s Lost Whale Calf

Dawn wrote about this heartbreaking news:

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Whale bonds with ship

This is pretty amazing – when you think about orphaned kittens and how they need to be looked after and how difficult it is to keep them alive, you read about this and realise that there really is no way to bottle feed a whale.

Posted by Dawn at 1:42 PM

The BBC says too: Hopes fade for Sydney whale calf

The lost calf – aged between one and two months – was first sighted on Sunday just north of Sydney and soon began to try to suckle from a yacht, which it would not leave.

Rescuers towed the boat into open sea hoping that the calf would find another female to suckle from, but the attempt failed and the whale returned to an inlet near Sydney. On Wednesday, another attempt also failed.

The whale has since been trying to suckle from other boats.

Sad sight

“It sounded like a bit of a vacuum cleaner on the bottom of the boat. I finally got up and here’s this whale suckling the side of the boat,” sailor Peter Lewis told a commercial radio station.

“It was a very, very sad sight. It did it for about an hour, going from side to side on the boat and at times blowing air under the boat, and it just seemed to give a sigh out at one stage as if, you know, ‘this isn’t working’.”

Chris McIntosh, a spokesman for the Department of National Parks and Wildlife, told AFP that the whale probably hadn’t had food for about five days and was getting weaker.

Euthanasia was “the most likely outcome, but we are not at that point yet”, he said.

It’s funny how the same thing can elicit such different emotions from people. Whales, who doesn’t like them? … that was rhetorical.

The irony is, while Sydney agonises over the fate of this whale calf, Japan’s whale-killing mob is revving up to put political spanners in the anti-whale killing works. This, after using humpbacks to blackmail the rest of the IWC during the latest IWC summit to allow it to continue killing endangered fin whales in the next whale-killing season. This, despite voices of dissension among its own, particularly Shigeko Misaki, a former advisor to the Japan Whaling Association and the former counsel for the Institute for Cetacean Research or ICR (Japanese government FUNDED unnecessary whale research by KILLING them institute) who says:

“…I now find myself retired and severed from much of the controversy over whaling. However, internet reports of whaling “progress” thus far persuade me that this season is the most opportune time for Japan’s government to decide to withdraw all whaling operations from the Southern Ocean.”

“I say this because I believe that pelagic whaling does not contribute to the prevention of global warming. Just think of the expensive fuel the Japanese whaling fleet consumes en route to the Antarctic, plus that consumed by the freezing ship for transporting the byproducts of whaling to the Japanese market. Over the years, Japanese research ships have made a mess on the ocean when fire broke out due to poor management of the vessel. Add to that the mess made by animal rights groups eager to attack the whaling ships. Whaling as a business hardly justifies the environmental costs. Talk about ‘food mileage’ has not touched on whale meat. Why doesn’t the government consider it more seriously, and cease whaling in any form, except small-scale coastal whaling?”

Never mind the insanity and stubbornness of hiding behind the limpid excuse of culture and heritage. The important question is: can the voice of reason, the compassion of logic prevail against the hell-bent whale-killers of the world?

What can we do to help bring about that outcome?

Japan: The horrors behind your made-to-order best friend

(Source article, Japan, Home of the Cute and Inbred Dog, filched from Dawn’s blog)

What do these read like to you?

… the real problem is what often arrives in the same litter: genetically defective sister and brother puppies born with missing paws or faces lacking eyes and a nose.

There have been dogs with brain disorders so severe that they spent all day running in circles, and others with bones so frail they dissolved in their bodies. Many carry hidden diseases that crop up years later, veterinarians and breeders say.

Coveted traits like a blue-tinged coat are often the result of recessive genes, which can determine appearance only when combined with another recessive gene.

Inbreeding is a quick way to bring out recessive traits, as dogs carrying the gene are repeatedly mated with their own offspring, enhancing the trait over successive generations.

When done carefully, some types of inbreeding are safe. But in Japan, all too many breeders throw aside caution in search of a quick profit, experts in the business say. In these cases, for every dog born with prized colors, many more appear with defects, also the product of recessive genes.

… nearly half of all Labradors suffered from the deformity — four times more than the United States…

Hirofumi Sasaki, a pet store owner in the western city of Hiroshima, has seen so many defective dogs that last year he converted an old bar into a hospice to care for them. So far he has taken in 32 dogs, though only 12 have survived.

One is Keika, a deaf 1-year-old female dachshund with eyes that wander aimlessly. Her breeder was originally selling her for about $7,500 because she is half-white, a rare trait in dachshunds.

“That is an unnatural color, like a person with blue skin,” Mr. Sasaki said.

The breeder told Mr. Sasaki that he had bred a dog with three generations of offspring — in human terms, first with its daughter, then a granddaughter and then a great-granddaughter — until Keika was born. The other four puppies in the litter were so hideously deformed that they were killed right after birth.

Science fiction excerpt? Horror flick scene? No, it’s real life, happening in Japan as we speak. but it’s not just Japan, everywhere it is happening, even in Singapore. It is getting attention in Japan only because of the alarmingly high incidence of deformities and mortality rates there. Part of the problem is unscrupulous breeders who treat the animals they breed like so many money-making machines and their offspring like so much goods promising profit.

To get an idea about the animal welfare situation in Japan, here’s a list of articles on Japanese animal welfare group, ARK‘s english website.

To put things in perspective, among this list of Singapore articles and news, this one shows the horror that goes on in our fair city won’t lose to even the biggest case uncovered in the US.

Like Singapore’s laws about breeding and pet shops, what Japan has are relatively new. And like Singapore, the problem is the lack of will or resources on authorities’ part to police and enforce said laws. Where does that leave the victims? I’m not talking about the people who buy these “designer” pets. Sure they lose money, but did they have to live with sometimes painful genetic defects, if allowed to live at all? The real victims are the animals – the mothers and fathers who are made to breed at an unnaturally fast and intense rate detrimental to their health and biology, and their offspring, the poor babies who might not even live long enough to taste mother’s milk. Every breeding animal deemed useless or any babies deemed unsaleable are cruelly disposed of.

Why is this happening? As long as there are people willing to buy pets without questioning the source, the puppy mills and kitten mills, and the middleman petshops will thrive. And so will gross neglect, abuse, mistreatment, abandonment. Sometimes when no longer profitable, breeding farms, along with all their voiceless victims, are nonchalantly abandoned.

The quotes and the article, appended below, relates to dogs, but for cats too, inbreeding has caused them a ton of issues. For example, white cats with blue eyes are often blind and deaf.

Selective breeding has given us many magnificent breeds. Selective breeding has also given us many dogs with health or mental problems.

Teacup anything have health problems compounded, as being teacup is a process of breeding runts with runts. Speaking of small, I remember catching something on Channel News Asia, where the topic happened to be very small breed dogs, specfically the chihuahua. Being unnaturally small for a canine, the chihuahua bitch faces labour problems far in excess of larger breeds, and often her babies can be delivered only by Caesarian due to the violation of natural foetus to birth canal ratio of the breed. The Chihuahua’s tiny size is already a standard, imagine what a teacup-sized dog goes through during labour.

Young anything are also very fragile – especially baby animals under 3 months of age. And yet, Singapore laws only prohibit the import of animals under 3 months of age, and so locally born baby kittens and puppies may be sold before their 3rd month… which may lead to tragedies like this.

Why are such cruelties happening, you may ask. Why isn’t anyone stopping them?

The most important thing to remember, as with all else, is that the power to stop this tragedy is within US, you and me, people, common folk. Consumers. For

“If consumers didn’t buy these unnatural dogs,” said Chizuko Yamaguchi, a veterinarian at the Japan Animal Welfare Society, “breeders wouldn’t breed them.”

Abandonment, and mistreatment is part of the phenomenon of novelty pet ownership. The lucky ones get rehomed, the slightly less will end up in shelters where they may be granted as stay of execution. The thing is, there are so many animals in shelters awaiting new homes.

In Singapore, the AVA and the SPCA puts down thousands of animals every year, and some of them can’t be accused of being scraggly dirty mongrels or drain cats. In the US, 3 to 4 million dogs and cats are put to death in shelters.

There are always animals hoping for a second chance, and too often, due to overcrowding at rescue centres, many of these hopefuls are put to death, sentenced by arbitrary judgments of age, looks, and personality. So if you’re thinking of getting a pet, why not consider adoption? You will literally be saving lives.

Japan, Home of the Cute and Inbred Dog

Hidekazu Kawanabe for The New York Times

Chihuahuas are popular in Japan; this one was bred to have a blue hue. More Photos >

By MARTIN FACKLER

Published: December 28, 2006

TOKYO, Dec. 27 — Care for a Chihuahua with a blue hue?

Or how about a teacup poodle so tiny it will fit into a purse — the canine equivalent of a bonsai?

The Japanese sure do.

Rare dogs are highly prized here, and can set buyers back more than $10,000. But the real problem is what often arrives in the same litter: genetically defective sister and brother puppies born with missing paws or faces lacking eyes and a nose.

There have been dogs with brain disorders so severe that they spent all day running in circles, and others with bones so frail they dissolved in their bodies. Many carry hidden diseases that crop up years later, veterinarians and breeders say.

Kiyomi Miyauchi was heartbroken to discover this after one of two Boston terriers she bought years ago suddenly collapsed last year into spasms on the living room floor and died. In March, one of its puppies died the same way; another went blind.

Ms. Miyauchi stumbled across a widespread problem here that is only starting to get attention. Rampant inbreeding has given Japanese dogs some of the highest rates of genetic defects in the world, sometimes four times higher than in the United States and Europe.

These illnesses are the tragic consequences of the national penchant in Japan for turning things cute and cuddly into social status symbols. But they also reflect the fondness for piling onto fads in Japan, a nation that always seems caught in the grip of some trend or other.

“Japanese are maniacs for booms,” said Toshiaki Kageyama, a professor of veterinary medicine specializing in genetic defects at Azabu University in Sagamihara. “But people forget here that dogs aren’t just status symbols. They are living things.”

Dogs are just one current rage. Less consequential is the big boom in the color pink: pink digital cameras, pink portable game consoles and, yes, pink laptop computers have become must-haves for young women. Last year, it was “bug king,” a computer game with battling beetles.

A number of the booms in Japan, including Tamagotchi — basically a virtual pet that grew on a computer screen — and the fanciful cartoon characters of Pokémon, have made their way across the Pacific and swept up American children, too.

The affection for fads in Japan reflects its group-oriented culture, a product of the conformity taught in its grueling education system. But booms also take off because they are fueled by big business. Companies like Sony and Nintendo are constantly looking to create the next adorable hit, churning out cute new characters and devices. Booms help sustain an entire industrial complex, from software makers to marketers and distributors, that thrives off the pack mentality of consumers in Japan.

The same thing is happening in Japan’s fast-growing pet industry, estimated at more than $10 billion a year. Chihuahuas are the current hot breed, after one starred in the television ads of a finance company. In the early 1990s, a TV drama featuring a Siberian husky helped send annual sales rocketing from just a few hundred dogs to 60,000; sales fell when the fad cooled, according to the Japan Kennel Club. The breed took off despite being inappropriately large for cramped homes in Japan.

The United States also experiences surges in sales of certain breeds, and some states have confronted “puppy mills” that churn out popular breeds by enacting “puppy lemon laws” that prevent breeders from selling diseased animals.

But in Japan, the sales spikes are far more extreme, statistics show. The kennel club says unethical breeders try to cash in on the booms, churning out large volumes of puppies from a small number of parents. While many breeders have stuck to healthy mating practices, the lure of profits has attracted less scrupulous breeders and led to proliferation of puppy mills.

Some veterinarians and other experts cite another, less obvious factor behind widespread risky inbreeding in Japan’s dog industry — the nation’s declining birthrate.

As the number of childless women and couples in Japan has increased, so has the number of dogs, which are being coddled and doted upon in place of children, experts say. In the last decade, the number of pet dogs in Japan has doubled to 13 million last year — outnumbering children under 12 — according to Takashi Harada, president of Yaseisha, a publisher of pet industry magazines.

“Households with few or no children are turning to dogs to fill the void,” he said. “For a dog to be part of the family, it has to be unique and have character, like a person.”

Indeed, many of these buyers want dogs they can show off like proud parents. They are willing to pay top yen, with rarer dogs fetching higher prices. Coveted traits like a blue-tinged coat are often the result of recessive genes, which can determine appearance only when combined with another recessive gene.

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A Pet Craze Leads to Genetic Defects

Inbreeding is a quick way to bring out recessive traits, as dogs carrying the gene are repeatedly mated with their own offspring, enhancing the trait over successive generations.

When done carefully, some types of inbreeding are safe. But in Japan, all too many breeders throw aside caution in search of a quick profit, experts in the business say. In these cases, for every dog born with prized colors, many more appear with defects, also the product of recessive genes.

“The demand is intense, and so is the temptation,” said Hidekazu Kawanabe, one of the country’s top Chihuahua breeders. “There are a lot of bad breeders out there who see dogs as nothing more than an industrial product to make quick money.”

Awareness is so recent that the only comprehensive survey of genetic defects came out two years ago, looking at malformed hips in Labrador retrievers. The results showed that nearly half of all Labradors suffered from the deformity — four times more than the United States, according to Professor Kageyama at Azabu University, who conducted the survey.

Hirofumi Sasaki, a pet store owner in the western city of Hiroshima, has seen so many defective dogs that last year he converted an old bar into a hospice to care for them. So far he has taken in 32 dogs, though only 12 have survived.

One is Keika, a deaf 1-year-old female dachshund with eyes that wander aimlessly. Her breeder was originally selling her for about $7,500 because she is half-white, a rare trait in dachshunds.

“That is an unnatural color, like a person with blue skin,” Mr. Sasaki said.

The breeder told Mr. Sasaki that he had bred a dog with three generations of offspring — in human terms, first with its daughter, then a granddaughter and then a great-granddaughter — until Keika was born. The other four puppies in the litter were so hideously deformed that they were killed right after birth.

Ms. Miyauchi, the Boston terrier owner and a resident of the western city of Kobe, said she was appalled to learn how common inbreeding was in Japan. After the death of her second Boston terrier, she said she went looking for the breeder, but the phone number she got from the pet shop was invalid.

“No one’s really monitoring the industry,” she said.

The government concedes that oversight is poor, and passed a law in June to revoke the licenses of breeders who use dogs with genetic defects for breeding. But the Environment Ministry, which has jurisdiction over pets, says it has just four officials to monitor all of 25,000 pet shops, kennels and breeders in Japan.

The Japan Kennel Club began adding results of DNA screening onto pedigree certificates in April. But that falls short of the American Kennel Club, which discourages risky inbreeding by listing acceptable colors for each breed.

“Japan is about 30 or 40 years behind in dealing with genetic defects,” said Takemi Nagamura, president of the Japan Kennel Club.

Ultimately, animal care professionals say, the solution is educating not just breeders but potential dog owners.

“If consumers didn’t buy these unnatural dogs,” said Chizuko Yamaguchi, a veterinarian at the Japan Animal Welfare Society, “breeders wouldn’t breed them.”

BBC 20080104: Japan firm offers ‘pet allowance’

Filched from Dawn’s blog. It’ll make my life complete if pet-friendly benefits were a reality here – I remember tears streaming down my face the whole day in the office on the Monday following Kheilly’s mishap. It was all I could do to not bawl. I did the same two years before, when Milly died.

Last Updated: Friday, 4 January 2008, 15:49 GMT

Japan firm offers ‘pet allowance’

Pet ownership is increasingly popular in Japan

A Japanese company is offering its employees a monthly “pet allowance” to help with the upkeep of their cats and dogs.

Kyoritsu Seiyaku, which makes animal medicines, said pets were a lifelong obligation for their owners.

Kyoritsu Seiyaku is offering its pet-owning employees about $9 (£4.70) per month, and hopes the system will spread to other Japanese firms.

The company does not, however, offer paid leave when employees’ pets die.

(read full article)