We the undersigned ask you to add your organization to our letter to the Japanese government below.

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Open Letter Contents and Initial Supporters

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Attention:
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama
Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare, Akira Nagatsuma,
Minister of Food Safety & Consumer Affairs, Mizuho Fukushima
Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Hirotaka Akamatsu
1-6-1 Nagata-cho
Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo 100-8968, Japan

cc. Dr. Margaret Chan, Director-General World Health Organisation (WHO) and JECFA (Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives), 20 Avenue Appia, 1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland

Open letter regarding contaminated whale, dolphin and porpoise products from ongoing commercial hunts in Japan

23rd November 2009

Dear Ministers,

We represent citizens and organizations worldwide that have serious concerns about the slaughter of whales, dolphins and porpoises in your country and the sale of contaminated products which seriously jeopardizes the health of your citizens.

Your Government sets annual catch quotas for around 20,000 toothed cetaceans (dolphins, porpoises and toothed whales). In recent years, around 15,000 animals have been killed each year. Toothed cetacean products are sold across Japan and are even distributed to school and hospital canteens in some areas. However, these toothed cetaceans are highly contaminated with mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other toxic substances which have bio-accumulated through the food chain.

Since the 1980s, scientists from Japan and around the world have found alarmingly high levels of toxic substances in toothed cetacean products on sale in Japanese markets and supermarkets. Concentrations in some samples exceeded your Government’s own safety limit for mercury by up to 5,000 times.

Mercury and other toxic substances are known to cause neurological disorders (with impacts on reaction time, attention span, language and memory), an increased risk of Parkinson’s disease, arteriosclerosis, immune subsystem suppression, and hypertension. Threats to children include autism, Asperger’s Syndrome and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

A survey conducted by Elsa Nature Conservancy in 2008 found that more than 90 percent of people responding were not sufficiently informed about the high levels of toxic substances in dolphin products and therefore not aware of the serious health risks for consumers. Given the many peer-reviewed scientific publications available confirming the effects of these dangerous contaminant levels on consumers, we cannot understand why your Government continues to set quotas for these hunts, and why the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) is not taking action to prevent the sale and consumption of highly contaminated cetacean food products. The MHLW website does not even sufficiently inform Japanese citizens about the contamination levels in cetacean products, and its 2005 seafood advisory is totally inadequate to protect consumers from the health risks associated with consuming toothed cetacean products.

Legislation to ban the sale of contaminated cetacean products is urgently required. Until this legislation is enacted, we ask that you urge the Minister of Health to require retailers to display warning labels on all cetacean products, advising consumers of potentially high contamination levels.

Our Alliance notes that the National Institute for Minamata Disease (NIMD) has recently collected more than 1000 hair samples from citizens of the dolphin hunting town of Taiji, in Wakayama, to analyze the mercury content. We strongly welcome this step as an indication that authorities share our concerns about the health risks related to the consumption of toothed cetacean products. However, we are concerned at information published in AERA, the weekly magazine of Asahi Shimbun, which suggests that the investigation was limited to biochemical analysis of the collected hair samples and did not include tests for neurological disorders that are recommended by leading Japanese medical scientists.

Despite the failure by national and local authorities to examine this issue comprehensively, it is clear from NIMD’s preliminary results that there is great cause for concern. According to AERA, a ‘significant’ number of cases reported levels of mercury more than 20 times higher than national average levels and higher than levels known to cause central nervous system damage. Given the discovery of Minamata disease in the 1950s and the subsequent failure by the Government of Japan to respond to the major mercury poisoning event which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,700 people, we are shocked that the Japanese government is not taking a precautionary response to this problem.

We strongly urge your Government to refrain from setting any future catch quotas for toothed cetaceans and to prohibit the sale of polluted cetacean products. We respectfully request that you urge the respective agencies responsible for these issues to work closely with the newly established Consumers Affairs Agency to expedite this process to a satisfactory conclusion.

The world is now watching the new Japanese Government to see how it will handle this urgent matter: Will it continue to allow the cruel and unnecessary slaughter of dolphins and other toothed cetaceans or will it make the right decision and choose to protect Japanese people from the consumption of contaminated cetacean products?

We look forward to your reply.
Yours sincerely,
Clare Perry
Environmental Investigation Agency
clareperry@eia-international.org

For and on behalf of:

Japanese Signatories

* Yoko Tomiyama, Consumers Union of Japan
* Keisuke Amagasa, NO! GMO Campaign, Japan
* Harukichi Onoduka, Japan Scientists’ Association
* Sakae Hemmi, Elsa Nature Conservancy, Japan
* Institute of Biodiversity in Japan
* All Life in a Viable Environment Society, Japan
* Cocoon, Japan
* Harmonics Life Center, Japan
* Happy Tail), Japan
* Lokahi, Japan
* Lunta no Niwa, Japan
* PangeaSeed, Japan
* Tulsi vegetarian restaurant, Japan
* NPO Uzu, Japan
* Warabe Mura, Japan
* NPO Minga Village, Japan

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Foreign Signatories
* Dr. Sandra Altherr, Pro Wildlife, Germany
* Sigrid Lüber, OceanCare, Switzerland
* Birgith Sloth, Society for the Conservation of Marine Mammals, Denmark
* Sue Fisher, Whale & Dolphin Conservation Society, UK
* Arni Finnsson, Iceland Nature Conservation Society, Iceland
* Andy Ottaway, Campaign Whale, UK
* Claire Bass, World Society for the Protection of Animals, UK
* Ric O’Barry, Save Japans Dolphins Coalition, USA
* Louie Psihoyos, Oceanic Preservation Society, USA
* Satish Kumar, chief editor, “Resurgence,” UK

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International Supporters

* Advocates for Animals, UK
* Animal Welfare Institute, USA
* Blue Voice.org, USA
* Campaign Whale, UK
* Campaigns Against the Cruelty to Animals (CATCA), Canada
* Canadian Marine Environment Protection Society, Canada
* Cetacean Society International, USA
* Choices for Tomorrow, USA
* Dolphin Connection, USA
* Dyrenes Venner, Denmark
* Earth Island Institute’s International Marine Mammal Project, USA
* Eastern Caribbean Coalition for Environmental Awareness (ECCEA)
* Fundacion Cethus, Argentina
* Humane Society International
* In Defense of Animals, USA
* International Fund for Animal Welfare
* LegaSeaS International, USA
* Marine Connection, UK
* MEER. e.v., Germany
* National Council of SPCAs (NSPCA), South Africa
* OceanCare, Switzerland
* Oceanic Preservation Society (OPS), USA
* Orca Network, USA
* Pacific Whale Foundation, Hawaii, USA
* Pro Wildlife, Germany
* Project Jonah, New Zealand
* Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), UK
* Save Japans Dolphins Coalition
* Society for the Conservation of Marine Mammals (GSM), Germany
* Society for the Conservation of Marine Mammals, Denmark
* Tethys Research Institute, Italy
* The Whaleman Foundation, USA
* Whale & Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS), UK
* World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA), UK

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This letter was drafted by an international alliance of environmental organizations concerned about marine pollution and related human health effects which was established by Elsa Nature Conservancy (Japan), the EnvironmentalInvestigation Agency (UK), OceanCare (Switzerland), Pro Wildlife (Germany), Society for Conservation of Marine Mammals (Denmark) and the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (UK).
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NOTES
1. Endo, T., Hotta, Y., Haraguchi, K., and Sakata, M. 2003. Mercury Contamination in the Red Meat of Whales and Dolphins Marketed for Human Consumption in Japan. Environ. Sci. Technol., 2003, 37 (12), pp 2681-2685. Available at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es034055n
2. “Poisonous Policies– Japan’s failure to stop the sale of polluted whale, dolphin and porpoise products”: http://www.eia- international.org/files/reports183-1.pdf
3. “Toxic Menu – Contamination of whale meat and impact on consumers’ health”
: www.prowildlife.de/sites/default/files/toxic menue_lowres.pdf
4. “Mercury Contamination is Threatening Our Dining Table –An Investigative Report” – www.elsaenc.net