David @ Tokyo

It's that time of month again! Today, Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries published the January 2007 figures for the volume of marine products in cold storage (in Japanese PDF format, M$ Excel format). The whale meat stockpile graphs I've been maintaining are updated below for these latest figures.

Quickly recapping from last month's update for December 2006 figures:

• Outgoing whale meat stock in 2006 totalled 8,558 tonnes, as compared to 5,955 tonnes in 2005 (a 44% increase year on year)
• Incoming whale meat stock in 2006 totalled 8,950 tonnes, as compared to 5,832 tonnes in 2005 (a 53% increase year on year, mostly due to the additional by-product available as a result of the first season of the JARPA II programme)
• The whale meat stockpile stood at 3,904 tonnes (a bogus Greenpeace claim suggested that "by the end of 2006, nearly 5,000 tonnes piled up in cold storage")
  

... but on with the show - here is the first month of figures and graphs for 2007.


January 2007 outgoing stock: 1,001 tonnes

The 1,001 tonnes of outgoing stock in January 2007 continues the strong consumption trend that has been prevalent over the winter months.

The figure is:

• 83% higher than for the same month last year
• the second highest outgoing stock volume figure since February 2004
• well above the average monthly outgoing figure
• well above the average monthly incoming figure too
  

January 2007 incoming stock: 462 tonnes

Pretty big for January - 209% higher than in the same month last year. I'm not sure what the story is here.


January 2007 overall stockpile movement: Down 539 tonnes to 3,365

This figure represents

• a 14% reduction in stock for the month of January
  
• stock levels were 6% higher than they were in the same month last year

Here's some more context for this figure:

• In January 2006 (prior to the completion of the JARPA II programme fleet's first season in the Antarctic) the stockpile level was (at 3,185 tonnes) actually 3% less than in January 2005
• With the completion of the first JARPA II season, and subsequent significant increase in supply of by-products from the programme, by April 2006 month end the stockpile level (at 5,969 tonnes) was 32% higher than in April 2005.
• Now, 9 months later, the stockpile size in January 2007 was again back down to a level only 6% higher than in January 2006.
  

A press release last year from the ICR stated that:

... supply to the market is kept under tight control and drip fed to ensure that whale meat is available in selected areas throughout the entire year.

"Demand always exceeds supply. At any given time, there will be an amount of whale meat in storage to ensure supply is always available..."

The official figures appear to reconcile with these statements.


Graph: Annual volumes
This graph is just the same as last month but now with the first month of figures for 2007 added.

The fatal fire accident on the Nisshin Maru which ultimately saw the JARPA II programme called off in February prior to completion is likely to result in a reduction in overall supply in 2007. This will almost certainly see the 2007 outgoing stock figures come in below the figures for 2006 as well, as outgoing stock is obviously capped by whatever volume of supply is available.

Kristjan Loftsson's commercial whaling operation is possibly going to export a few hundred tonnes of whale meat product to the Japanese market later this year, but the volume they have available is very small at this stage, and not likely to make a significant impact this year.


Graph: Monthly stockpile movements
Note that while the peak stockpile size has increased, the steeper slope of the stockpile line for the 2006 months illustrates the increasing rate of consumption. The stockpile looks set to bottom out at just below 3,000 tonnes in 2007, as it has done in recent years.


Graph: 12-month moving averages:
The information that Junko Sakuma didn't want you to see - the increasing consumption trend in recent years remains evident, with the big increase in supply since the return of JARPA II last year now almost completely cancelled out.

With no supply increase expected in 2007, the increasing trends illustrated here are likely to level out over the next couple of months, and probably decrease slightly given the likelihood of lower supply in 2007 than in 2006.

Graph: Cumulative volume:
This graphs shows a similar thing as the previous graph. The gap between supply and consumption over the last 12 months was just a fraction of the outgoing stock volume figure for January 2007, and smaller than the amount of meat supplied in typical off-season month.

When we see the February figures next month they are likely to indicate that consumption from March 2006 to February 2007 exceeded supply over the same 12 month period.

Graph: Regional whale meat stockpiles:
The biggest drops in stock levels last month occurred in Kanazawa, Hakodate and Kushiro. The top 7 locations shown here for January 2007 account for around 84% of all whale meat in stock. You can't see it very well in this graph, but Nagasaki (with 77 tonnes) replaced Shimonoseki at the bottom of January's top 7.

Kagoshima had been slated as the 2007 port of return for the Nisshin Maru, but due to the fire disaster is now apparently returning to Tokyo for inspections and repairs instead. Some of the whale meat by-products from the shortened season will thus presumably be landed in Tokyo - maybe all of it if the Oriental Bluebird is also headed here.


An amusingly backwards statement in the Australian media today:

Greenpeace chief executive Steve Shallhorn said the Japanese people were the key to ending whaling, because whale meat consumption was continuing to drop in Japan.

"Japanese people are voting with their forks," Mr Shallhorn told reporters.

Shallhorn's suggestion that whale meat is losing popularity makes for a very easily contradicted null hypothesis.

But what is wackiest is that Shallhorn appears to think that if people have no desire to eat a certain type of food, they will strive to prevent others from eating it as well.

I don't think kind of thinking is particularly prevalent amongst Japanese consumers (and I also think that Japanese food connoisseurs vote with their chopsticks, not their forks).

Labels: stockpile figures