Reuters: Marine mammal meat on the menu, hurrahs in Canada. NYTimes and more: Marine mammal meat on the menu in LA sushi bar, call the cops!
Two rather straightforward events in the news today provide a startling contrast:
1) In Los Angeles, a sting operation linked to the Oscars nets a sushi restaurant serving slices of sei whale. The makers of The Cove, a documentary that won an Oscar for its vivid chronicle of a dolphin slaughter in Japan , spent a few days beforehand setting up a sting (regarding the documentary, a brief, haunting image of a blood red inlet flashed during the televised proceedings, probably the same place as in this photo). A Southern California restaurant now seems to face serious violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act:
- NYTimes – Jennifer Steinhauer: Oscar Winners Try to Keep Whale Off Sushi Plates ;
2) In Ottawa, the Parliament’s inhouse restaurant will be regularly featuring seal meat. This is to show solidarity with hunters of harp seals in the nation’s far north, and defiance of the European Union’s ban in import of meat or other seal parts gained from the hunt. Tomorrow: seal loin wrapped in double-smoked bacon with a port reduction sauce.
- BBC – Canada MPs to dine on seal meat ;
- Reuters: Seal meat to be on menu at Canadian Parliament ;
- Globe and Mail – Gloria Galloway: Seal on the menu for parliamentarians ; The lede: “The taste is apparently quite gamy – sort of like moose but not really like moose at all….”
I’ve no comment on the quality of this news or the writing of it. It does seem legit and the reporting is somewhat routine. But it adds up to a whiplash in the brain. Sei whales are an easy call. But what to think, what to think — why not eat seals if one also eats moose??
Pic source ;
- Charlie Petit
