Whale and dolphin meat sold by a large Japanese online retailer contain levels of mercury up to 47 times higher than the government’s recommended safe level, according to a study by the Environmental Investigation Agency.



The UK-based EIA said every one of the 20 samples it tested contained unsafe levels of mercury and called on the retailer to withdraw them immediately. The agency bought 13 of the samples from Yahoo! Japan and the remainder from Japanese supermarkets.

Yahoo! Japan is the only major online retailer in the country that continues to sell cetacean products. Rakuten, Japan’s biggest online retailer, stopped selling whale and dolphin meat after the international court of justice ordered Japan last April to immediately halt its annual whale hunts in the southern ocean.

Rakuten’s move came soon after independent experts in Japan, on behalf of the EIA, exposed the e-commerce company as the world’s biggest online retailer of elephant ivory and whale meat.

A man cuts meat from a Baird’s beaked whale at a slaughterhouse in Chiba Prefecture, Japan. Photograph: EPA

The samples tested by the EIA included products derived from the notorious dolphin slaughter in Taiji, the subject of the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove.

The tests showed that mercury levels in all of the samples exceeded the Japanese government’s safe level of 0.4 parts per million. A sample of dried pilot whale meat bought from Yahoo! Japan revealed a mercury level of 19ppm, more than 47 times the safe limit, the agency said.

“Time and again, our analysis of cetacean products on sale in Japan has shown them to be riddled with mercury and other pollutants which pose serious threats to human health,” said Clare Perry, head of the EIA’s oceans campaign.

“By continuing to allow Japanese consumers to buy and eat these toxic products in ignorance of the very real risks they pose, the government and Yahoo! Japan are utterly failing in their duty of care.



Our analysis of cetacean products on sale in Japan has shown them to be riddled with mercury and other pollutants Clare Perry, EIA

“EIA calls on both – and on all retailers of whale and dolphin products in Japan – to stop gambling with consumers’ health and to take swift and decisive action to remove them from the market.”



Among the tested products sold by Yahoo! Japan were pilot whale rib cut (18ppm), Baird’s beaked whale jerky (3.7ppm) and stew (7.2ppm), pilot whale spare ribs (13ppm) and roasted whale (10ppm).

Items bought in supermarkets and identified as deriving from the annual hunt in Taiji included dolphin meat (11ppm), dolphin stomach meat (2.8ppm) and whale intestines (10ppm).

Packaging on half of the tested products did not specify the type of cetacean species inside, in violation of Japanese labelling laws, the EIA said.

Studies of people who regularly consume cetacean products show that mercury and other contaminants can have an adverse effect on foetal development, neural development and memory, as well as increasing the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, hypertension and arteriosclerosis in adults.

A 2010 Japanese study found that residents of Taiji had levels of mercury higher than the national average, probably due to their consumption of whale and dolphin meat, although further tests revealed none had suffered ill effects.