Proposals to resume commercial whaling have been dealt a blow by DNA detective work showing that restaurants in the US and South Korea illegally sold whale meat from Japan.
In June, Japan, Iceland and Norway are expected to ask the International Whaling Commission (IWC) for permission to resume commercial whaling. They say they can prevent smuggling by matching the DNA of whale meat sold in markets to a register of all legally caught whales. But all have refused to make their DNA registers public.
To find out the origin of whale meat being sold outside Japan, Scott Baker of Oregon State University in Corvallis and colleagues secretly took samples from two restaurants, one in Santa Monica, California, and another in Seoul, South Korea.
They compared the DNA with that from samples bought in Japan, and found that they came from the same animals – proving that meat from whales hunted in Japan's scientific programme have been illegally sold abroad. The findings resulted in police raids on the restaurants last month.
Read this Article here:NewScientist
A genetic analysis of meat found in Los Angeles showed that it was identical to meat from a sei whale being sold in Japan in 2007 ... Criminal proceedings have started against the Los Angeles restaurant caught selling the whale meat.
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