Environmental Investigation Agency: Amazon.com Profits From Slaughter of Whales

Internet giant urged to clean house and ban all cetacean products

Update 22 Feb 2012: Amazon.com stops selling whale meat

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PRESS RELEASE

WASHINGTON, Feb. 21, 2012

Internet marketplace giant Amazon.com is today called on to stop supporting commercial whaling by immediately and permanently banning the sale of all products from whales, dolphins and porpoises (collectively known as "cetaceans").

Amazon.com's Unpalatable Profits, a new report by the Environmental Investigation Agency, launched in co-operation with Humane Society International, reveals that Amazon Japan, the wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon Inc., sells more than a hundred cetacean food products.

In December 2011, 147 whale products were found for sale on Amazon Japan. The listed products included fin, sei, minke and Bryde's whales, all protected by the International Whaling Commission's moratorium on commercial whaling and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which forbids international trade. Despite this, several companies were selling endangered fin whale imported from Iceland.

Amazon Japan was also selling pilot whale and other unspecified products from the infamous Taiji drive hunts, highlighted in the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove.

EIA has released a hard-hitting 50-second campaign film urging consumers to tell Amazon boss Jeff Bezos to stop selling whales.

"Amazon.com has a clear policy of banning trade in endangered and threatened species but is turning a blind eye to commercial trade in whale products from endangered and threatened whales on its Japanese website," said Allan Thornton, president of the Environmental Investigation Agency...

Source: Internet giant urged to clean house and ban all cetacean products
Author: Environmental Investigation Agency

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