The Pacific nation of Japan has announced today that their controversial scientific whaling programme has finally come to an end, and that after many years of ruthlessly slaughtering whales, they have made a breakthrough in their quest to discover which one is the tastiest.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, who has publicly defended whaling activities in his official capacity, argued that his country’s scientists had once and for all been “vindicated” in their mission.

“Today, our brothers and sisters have come to the end of a great and noble undertaking,” he said, in a written statement released by the Japanese Government. “For years now, rogue elements in the international community have hurled baseless accusations against us. They say that we are a nation of brazen murderers with no respect for international law. They charge that we have disguised commercial whaling as a scientific endeavour to mask our secret love for delicious, delicious whales.

“Today we have proven them wrong.”

Scientists involved in Japan’s research announced this morning that – having weighed up several important criteria including flavour, texture and consistency – that the world’s tastiest whale was determined to be the endangered North Pacific right whale.

Japan maintains that it has not killed any right whales, and has merely eaten them.

The announcement has left some anti-whaling groups, including Greenpeace, looking red-faced, as their charge that Japan was not actually conducting scientific research now appears inaccurate.

“We ask that our critics closely examine the papers that have been released today,” wrote Kishida. “If they do, they will see that the reports we have compiled are indeed scientific, and contain large amounts of science, including graphs, numbers, tables, and text in parentheses.”

A spokesperson for Greenpeace was forced to apologise on behalf of the organisation this afternoon, acknowledging that Japan’s report did contain “what appears to be science.”

Now that its research is complete, Kishida said that Japan would shift its focus to a new study to determine which whales die fastest when shot with a harpoon.