Sunday 14 March 2010

Do you want to try this sushi?

Do you like to eat sushi? "Sushi chef, restaurant charged with serving whale" in Scientific American talks about sushi with whale in California. Do you want to try?

According to the news, a sushi chef and restaurant have been charged because the sushi chef served whale meat to two customers. He violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act; he sold illegally. U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte Jr. said that "Someone should not be able to walk into a restaurant and order a plate of an endangered species," (¶ 4).

I think that everyone knows that whale is an endangered species and it is illegal to kill, buy and sell these meats. The following questions are that why the chef and restaurant sold it and why they were not afraid of the law. Do they think about morality? Moreover, in the news only the chef and restaurant got the punishment. How about the customers? I think we should punish them too. However, they might not know that this serve made from whale meat while they ordered or they might work for the officer.
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References
Sushi chef, restaurant charged with serving whale. (2010, March 11). Scientific American. Retrieved March 14, 2010 from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=sushi-restaurant-whale


1 comment:

  1. I think that Ann's first question raises some questions similar to those in Ariely's essay. The law is part of a cost benefit analysis, and if people do not actually believe that they are doing anything wrong, then the cost benefit analysis is unlikely to stop the behaviour.
    Now that I htink of it, perhaps that is an important reason why anti-drug laws are not only so harmful to people and society, but also impressively useless: many (most?) ordinary people do not think that there is anything wrong with using illegal drugs, so they ignore the law, which many policemen obviously also ignore, perhaps because they too believe that the law does not reflect justice. (I think there is a very interesting research paper topic here, if anyone is interested.)

    Back to whales: if the species were endangered, I would agree that it was morally wrong to serve the whale meat, but if it were not from an endangered species of whale, and not all are endangered, then it's hard to see why eating whale is any worse than eating pig. Is there any significant and relevant difference?

    You might also be interested in The Economist's article "Not whaling but drowning" (2010, March 11) at http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15663372
    The responses in the comments on it might also be of interest.

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