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UPDATE: Monday, January 8, 2007
The Okuwa Supermarket has announced that the ban on selling dolphin meat is now PERMANENT!
Read the Press Release here. Also available in Japanese (.pdf, ~100k).
You may recall that we bought a package of striped dolphin meat from the Shingu Okuwa Supermarket on December 12th last year and delivered it to journalist Boyd Harnell who is documenting the story of mercury poisoned dolphin meat for The Japan Times. Harnell sent the meat to an independent lab in Tokyo for testing.
As a result of these tests, the Okuwa Supermarket Corporation decided to ban the sale of all dolphin meat in all of their stores on December 26, 2006. They said that they would need to conduct testing of their own to determine whether or not the ban was going to be permanent or temporary.
The supermarket chain and conglomerate, which is comprised of drug stores, movie theatres, home store centers, sports clubs, hotels and amusement facilities, reported in an e-mail message to Harnell:
"We have decided, as a matter of company policy, that we will discontinue permanently the sale of dolphin meat regardless of test results currently being conducted by the company at an independent lab." The supermarket adds: "Those test results will be concluded next week, but the results will not be revealed."
The Save Japn Dolphins coalition (Earth Island Institute, Elsa Nature Conservancy of Japan, Animal Welfare Institute, and In Defense of Animals) considers this recent development to be major progress in our efforts to stop the sale and export of Japanese dolphin meat.
Times reporter Harnell initiated the random sample tests and deserves much credit for this new development.
Our follow up work will now focus on getting other stores in Japan to follow the lead of the Okuwa Supermarket chain and ban dolphin meat from their shelves.
Our coalition members want to formally thank the Okuwa Supermarket chain for their landmark decision to protect the Japanese people from contaminated food products.
Read the Press Release here. Also available in Japanese (.pdf, ~100k).