Animal welfare groups are urging True World Foods, one of the largest sushi suppliers in the US, to pressure its Japanese partner Kyokuyo to stop selling whale meat products.
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True World has entered into a partnership with Kyokuyo to distribute its frozen sushi product in the US.
In a new report, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) details Kyokuyo’s links with whale hunting. Although it sold its share in the Japanese government’s whaling fleet last year, Kyokuyo began in the 1930s as a whaling company operating in the Antarctic, and continues to sell millions of cans of Polar Seas canned whale meat and other whale products across Japan and online.
Humane Society International (HSI) and IFAW (The International Fund for Animal Welfare) have joined the EIA in calling on True World Foods to pressure Kyokuyo to stop selling whale products.
The groups are also urging US grocery stores to think twice before stocking Polar Seas products which are expected to hit shelves across the US in the early-summer.
“Through its sales of millions and millions of cans of whale meat in Japan each year, Kyokuyo is a driving force behind Japan’s expanding commercial whaling industry,” said EIA president Allan Thornton. “We appeal to True World Foods to use their influence to persuade Kyokuyo to immediately end their massive sale of whale meat and to uphold international laws that protect great whales from commercial hunting.”
Kitty Block, director of treaty law, oceans, and wildlife protection at HIS, said: “No respectable business should want to be associated with the cruel and inhumane killing of one of the world’s most magnificent animals. With such a large presence in the United States where citizens are outraged by the wanton slaughter, it is incumbent upon True World Foods to convince Kyokuyo to get out of the whaling business now.”
