MOSAIC: Japan to sell whale meat
THOUSANDS of tons of meat from whales hunted under a government-backed research programme will arrive in Japanese markets and canneries in an annual sale expected to raise 3.36 billion yen ($33.3 million) to help fund the programme, long denounced by environmentalists as a front for commercial whaling.
Commercial whaling was banned in 1986 to protect the endangered mammals, but the International Whaling Commission approved restricted hauls by Japan a year later for research purposes.
Whaling expeditions organized by a government-affiliated Japanese research institute bring back hundreds of minke whales and other species every year. Japan, which is one of the world’s largest consumers of whale meat, says it is gathering data to build a case that whale numbers have recovered enough to sustain limited commercial hunts.
The meat is eventually sold to wholesalers and makes its way into restaurants and school lunches. That’s one of the main reasons the research programme has long been denounced as banned commercial whaling in disguise by environmental groups and anti-whaling nations including the United States.
Japanese fisheries officials emphasise that an IWC convention requires any whales hunted for scientific purposes to be processed.
The government-subsidized Institute of Cetacean Research said it plans to market 1,346.2 metric tons of meat from 200 whales hunted between May and August in the Northwest Pacific Ocean. The three-month sale has begun.
One kilogramme of red minke whale meat — the kind eaten raw as sashimi — will be priced at 2,600 yen ($24).
About a third of the meat will be shipped to wholesale markets nationwide, where it will be resold to restaurants, and the rest will be sold to schools and canneries.
Whale meat used to be a staple of school lunches in Japan until the IWC banned commercial whaling, turning blubber into a pricey delicacy available mostly at gourmet eateries.
The proceeds from whale meat sales help pay for the research programme, which costs about five billion yen ($46 million) a year.
Japan’s long-standing campaign to convince the IWC to lift its commercial whaling ban suffered a setback at the group’s annual meeting in Berlin in June.
A majority of the 50-member commission blocked a Japanese request to hunt 150 minke whales and 150 Bryde’s whales a year in the North Pacific and voted to establish a panel to look at improving whale protection.
Frustrated officials in Tokyo threatened to withdraw from the IWC or hold back financial contributions.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi later said his country would work through the commission to achieve greater understanding of its position. His allies include Norway, which rejected the 1987 commercial whaling ban under IWC rules.— Samina Iqbal
Drug smuggling
THE transportation of illicit drugs by internal concealment is used for international cocaine and heroin smuggling, states a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
People involved are called body packers or “swallowers,” “internal carriers,” “couriers,” or “mules.”
The term “body stuffing,” refers to the swallowing of relatively small amounts of loosely wrapped drug to prevent detection. In addition to transporting cocaine and heroin, body packers may smuggle amphetamines, “ecstasy”, marijuana, or hashish. Occasionally, they ingest more than one drug, and carry 1kg in 50 to 100 packets, which can be life-threatening.
Body packers were predominantly young men, but now children are being used. Two incidents reported two unaccompanied boys, 12 and 16 years. Neither raised the suspicion of the customs officials.
Drug packets, are well crafted, with precision, by an automated process. The drug is densely packed into a latex sheath, as a balloon.This layer is tied at the open end, covered with several layers of latex, and sealed with a hard wax coating. Aluminium foil, plastic food wrap, carbon paper, or other material is incorporated to alter the radiodensity, to prevent detection.
The body packers swallow packets and after a transit time of two days to two weeks, take a laxative to pass out the cargo. There is always a danger of leakage of the drug or rupture of the packet, which can be toxic. For detecting drugs in a suspected body packer, he should be interrogated and then subjected to an Ultrasound scan or an abdominal computed tomography — Dr Fatema Jawad
Where’s all the gold?
MUCH of the world’s gold is in the form of gold bars, coins and jewellery. Gold bars are often found stored in bank vaults.
One of the biggest vaults is Fort Knox in Kentucky, USA which contains the US government's gold reserves. At one time, it held over 22,000 tonnes, but now contains about 8,000 tonnes of gold.
Currently, about 15 years annual consumption of gold is held as stored bars in vaults. This amounts to about one-third of all the gold ever mined. Much more than this is in the form of gold jewellery worldwide. India is the biggest gold jewellery market. Industrial applications account for a relatively small proportion of the total. — WGC
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