PUBLIC MARKS with tags baleine & japon

Of about 29,600 public elementary and junior high schools nationwide offering lunches for students, 5,355 schools, or 18%, responded they had served whale meat in their lunches at least once in fiscal 2009 through March 2010, according to the survey conducted from June to August this year.

The Institute of Cetacean Research, which carries out the government’s whaling, provided whale meat to local municipalities for school lunches at one-third of the market price, which was 2,060 yen per kg in 2009.

The annual amount of meat supplied domestically peaked at around 220,000 tons in 1962, but plunged sharply to around 1,000 tons in the 1990s after an international moratorium on commercial whaling was introduced in the 1980s.