Activists Call For Amazon To Ban Whale Meat

Who knew Amazon.com sold whale meat?

A petition posted to Change.org exhorts the world's largest online retailer to ban the sale of all whale, dolphin, and porpoise products.

According to a report by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Humane Society International, Amazon Japan was selling more than 100 such food products, including whale bacon, whale jerky, and canned whale meat prior to Feb. 22.

Amazon pulled all the listings after the report, but the petition currently has more than 164,000 signatures asking the retailer to do more by banning the sale of cetacean products entirely, which would, the petition states, "send a clear message to the world."

Commercial whaling has been banned across the globe for 25 years, but The Huffington Post reports that Japan is allowed to kill a limited number of whales per year in the name of scientific research, and kills about 1,000 whales annually. Critics maintain that the "scientific expeditions" are actually commercial whaling ventures in disguise, and are more likely to result in whale bacon than any significant research.