Norway keeps whaling quota unchanged for 2014

Norway maintained on Tuesday its quota of previous years to hunt up to1,286 whales in its waters in 2014, despite whalers repeatedly catching less than thelimit."This year too, we have decided on a quota which guarantees continuity and a goodframework for the whaling sector," Fisheries Minister Elisabeth Aspaker said in a statement.Norway formally objected to the 1986 commercial whaling moratorium and does notconsider itself subject to it.The Scandinavian kingdom and Iceland are the only countries in the world to huntwhales for commercial purposes.Both nations argue that the whale species they hunt have a sufficiently largepopulation to not be endangered.The announcement came the day after the whaling industry suffered a serioussetback: the International Court of Justice ordered Japan to end its annual Antarcticwhale hunt of fin whales, a larger species than the Minke whale Norway catches.The United Nations' Hague-based court said that the programme was a commercialactivity disguised as science and that most of the meat ended up on supermarketshelves.In Norway, where whale meat used to be considered a poor man's dish, whalersstruggle to reach the quota: in 2013, only 594 whales were harpooned according toofficial data.Animal rights activists say this is a sign of the consumers' lack of interest."Year after year, the quotas aren't reached and this new quota is unnecessarily high,"Greenpeace Norway head Truls Gulowsen told AFP."But that's not a big problem: it's a dying industry, because consumers prefer pizza to whale meat."Whaling professionals argue they do not reach the quota due to the whale meatprocessing plants' lack of capacity, high fuel prices and distant hunting areas.The hunting season goes from April 1 to September 30.