Japanese minister says he sees no end to whaling

Japan will never stop its annual hunt for whales, a government minister has reportedly said, amid recent clashes on the high seas between environmental activists and Japanese whaling ships. "I don't think there will be any kind of an end for whaling by Japan," Yoshimasa Hayashi, the Japanese minister for agriculture, forestry and fisheries, said in an interview with the French news service Agence France-Presse on Tuesday. His comments came after a U.S. judge described Sea Shepherd, the conservationist group that has sought to physically block the Japanese whale hunts, as "pirates." Arguing that Japan has "a long tradition and culture of whaling," Hayashi, the secretary-general of a pro-whaling group in the governing Liberal Democratic Party, pointed out other countries' eating habits that may not have universal approval. "In some countries they eat dogs, like Korea. In Australia they eat kangaroos," he was cited as saying. "We don't eat those animals, but we don't stop them from doing that because we understand that's their culture."...more