[OANNES Foro] Forensic DNA blow to commercial whaling proposals

[Mario Cabrejos]

Forensic DNA blow to commercial whaling proposals 
by Andy Coghlan 
14 April 2010
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18770-forensic-dna-blow-to-commercial-whaling-proposals.html?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=dn18770
Proposals to resume commercial whaling have been dealt a blow by DNA detective work showing that restaurants in the US and South Korea illegally sold whale meat from Japan.

In June, Japan, Iceland and Norway are expected to ask the International Whaling Commission (IWC) for permission to resume commercial whaling. They say they can prevent smuggling by matching the DNA of whale meat sold in markets to a register of all legally caught whales. But all have refused to make their DNA registers public.

To find out the origin of whale meat being sold outside Japan, Scott Baker of Oregon State University in Corvallis and colleagues secretly took samples from two restaurants, one in Santa Monica, California, and another in Seoul, South Korea.

They compared the DNA with that from samples bought in Japan, and found that they came from the same animals - proving that meat from whales hunted in Japan's scientific programme have been illegally sold abroad. The findings resulted in police raids on the restaurants last month.

Baker says the monitoring system can only work if Japan, Iceland and Norway make their DNA registers publicly available, and hand them over to an independent body like the IWC so routine checks can be carried out.

Journal reference: Biology Letters, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2010.0239



__________ Información de ESET NOD32 Antivirus, versión de la base de firmas de virus 5036 (20100417) __________

ESET NOD32 Antivirus ha comprobado este mensaje.

http://www.eset.com

------------ próxima parte ------------
Se ha borrado un adjunto en formato HTML...
URL: <http://lista.oannes.org.pe/pipermail/oannes-oannes.org.pe/attachments/20100417/12cc7abe/attachment.htm>