Japan’s whaling fleet has failed to catch its quota, after being disrupted by clashes with anti-hunting activists.
The fisheries agency said the fleet caught 60% of the minke whales they had planned – 551 from a target of 850.
Thought for the Day
So what’s wrong with the PETA prize? You need to sell your product in order to win. According to the contest guidelines (PDF), the million-dollar meat must be available in stores to qualify for the cash. Fake-chicken entrepreneurs have to demonstrate a “commercial sales minimum” at a “comparable market price”; in plain English, they need to move 2,000 pounds of the stuff at supermarkets and chain restaurants spread out across 10 states during a period of three months. And the Franken-meat can’t cost more than regular chicken.
That means PETA won’t be content with any intermediate (and not immediately profitable) breakthrough, like the development of lab-grown chicken that tastes as good as the natural stuff. Instead, the organization will hold the purse until a “commercially viable” product hits the market. In other words, you can’t win the $1 million unless you’re already in position to make a profit. At that point, a science prize doesn’t provide much incentive for innovation. It’s more like a small bonus.
To make matters worse, PETA’s commercial requirements saddle researchers with demands that have nothing to do with science. Any company that wants to sell artificial chicken for public consumption will probably face a lengthy government-review process. Consider that it took five years for the Food and Drug Administration to approve the sale of cloned meat. Let’s say you invented a perfect chicken substitute tomorrow—something so delicious and inexpensive that it could go into production right away. Even then, you still might not make the PETA deadline for supermarket sales.
The PETA prize may turn out to be a minor boon for lab-meat research, insofar as it generates publicity for the project. (When everyone starts talking about artificial chicken, private investors will take notice.) But it’s hard to imagine that the $1 million will itself provide much incentive. As a science prize, it just feels a little fake.
Sissinghurst Castle Gardens
Thought for the Day
Replacing animal research is as much about engendering a collective ‘can-do’ attitude as it is about solving technological hurdles. Too often, the debate about animal experiments has been characterised by defensiveness and political opportunism. Animal research has been hailed by its proponents as a gold standard that it clearly is not – and government policies have been steered by pressure to appear tough on minority activism, rather than the need to harness the best that advanced research technologies can offer. On World Lab Animal Day, and with some 93% of Europeans believing that more needs to be done to help animals in laboratories, it is time for politicians and the research community to catch up.
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Tagged Animals in Research, Testing and Education, Thought for the Day
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Thought for the Day
Whether you think killing seals is a bad thing or a good thing, whether you think it barbaric or humane, you should oppose Canada’s annual seal hunt. According to Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) the justification for the hunt is to provide economic opportunities for Canada’s coastal communities. Last year, according to its Web site, this entire economic opportunity amounted to $12-million, the value of all seal pelts landed. They fetched on average $52 a pelt. According to evidence given to Parliament’s standing committee on fisheries and oceans on Nov. 6, 2006, half of that is eaten up by expenses, so we are talking, at most, $6-million that flowed to the sealers themselves: one-tenth of 1% of Newfound-land’s GDP. (This year it will be even less, because pelts of three to four week old “beaters” that make up 95% of the catch are selling for between $6 and $33.)
This $6-million costs Canadians at least 10 times as much and does so year after year. First of all, there is the cost of deploying the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) to the seal hunt for seven weeks each year. Last year it involved 10 vessels, many of them icebreakers, helicopters and patrol planes. Nobody in government knows, even less wants to know, what this costs. DFO claims it costs nothing because the boats and aircraft are owned and the crews are on salary. Does it cost nothing to put out fires in Toronto because it owns the trucks and firefighters aren’t on piecework? Toronto hires firefighters and buys trucks based on the anticipated number and severity of fires. A significant part of what CCG does is rescue sealers. Some 24% of its 2003 fishing vessel rescues derived from this hunt. Without it, CCG’s annual budget could be significantly reduced. One hunt-deployed icebreaker, the Amundsen, costs $50,000 per day to operate in winter. Given DFO’s lack of transparency, one can only estimate the annual CCG cost attributable to the hunt at $5-million.
Secondly, every year some disaster occurs. Last year, it was heavy ice that trapped sealers for days on end. Some even ran out of cigarettes! DFO calculated the extra CCG costs due to heavy ice at $3.41-million. It also paid $7.9-million to owners of boats damaged by ice. This year, it is the drowning of four sealers and the near drowning of two while being rescued by CCG. This resulted in the cost of an unsuccessful week-long 2,800 nautical square mile search for one of the drowned and his boat involving patrol planes, helicopters and three icebreakers. The inevitable lawsuits and legal bills will easily cost more than $6-million.
The Grumpy Vegan asks that you read the entire article to learn more about how Canada’s government subsidizes the seal slaughter.
Thought for the Day
It would help if we went vegan. At any rate, we should eat less meat. Red meat requires more grain than white meat: a chicken requires 2kg of grain for every kilogram of meat, compared to a cow’s 8kg, for example (though some cows graze on pasture rather than eat meal).
Inflation-proof your diet: How changing your shopping list could save you money
