Prompted by environmental campaigners, UK supermarket group Tesco has announced it will drop whale and dolphin meat from its newly acquired Japanese stores immediately.

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According to Tesco, the company took the decision ‘due to a lack of customer demand’ but campaigners such as the Environmental Investigation Agency said that it, along with other groups, had pressed Tesco to stop selling whale meat.


Although there is a worldwide ban on commercial whaling, Japan is permitted to catch up to 540 whales a year for scientific research purposes. Most of the 3,000 tons of whale meat on Japanese supermarket shelves comes from this cull.

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