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Restaurant Caught Serving Whale Sushi

  • Heidee
  • March 16, 2010
The flukes of a sperm whale as it dives into t...
Whale meat for Sushi???

Remember that documentary film we talked about last time, The Cove? Well, it turns out that the people behind that movie are not yet through fighting oppression of poor water mammals. They tipped off the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the California Department of Fish and Game, and the federal Customs and Border Protection agency that a Japanese restaurant in Santa Monica is serving whale meat along with their other exotic forms of sushi.

It was an operation worthy of a Mission Impossible movie, or so we’d like to think. Undercover agents and environmental advocates visited the Hump restaurant in the guise of being sushi-loving patrons and slipped the meat into their pockets instead of their mouths. These were then analyzed and all involved groups concluded that it was made up of [insert hair-raising theme song here] – the endangered Sei whale! The horror!

Federal prosecutors have filed a criminal complaint against the restaurant for violating the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act. The complaint charges the restaurant’s parent company, Typhoon Restaurant Inc. and its chef, Kiyoshiro Yamamoto, with the illegal sale of a marine mammal product for an unauthorized purpose, a misdemeanor offense that carries a maximum statutory penalty of one year in federal prison and a maximum fine of $100,000 for an individual and $200,000 for an organization.The Hump’s lawyer Gary Lincenberg has issued a statement that the restaurant accepted responsibility for the wrongdoing and would agree to pay a fine and resolve the matter in court.

Meanwhile, one of the “good guys,” the United States attorney, Andre Birotte Jr. has this to say: “Someone should not be able to walk into a restaurant and order a plate of an endangered species.” Enough said.

[Source]

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