Radioactive waste from Sellafield has been found in Scottish farmed salmon sold in major British supermarkets. Tests commissioned by Greenpeace revealed traces of radioactive waste in packets of fresh and smoked salmon.
The tests, conducted independently by Southampton University's oceanography centre, found low levels Technetium-99 (Tc-99) in farmed Scottish salmon sold at Sainsbury's, Tesco, Asda, Safeway, Waitrose and Marks & Spencer.
Tc-99 is a byproduct of Magnox fuel reprocessing. Dr David Santillo, a scientist at Greenpeace's research laboratories at Exeter University, said: "Tc-99 should not be there at all. It is inexplicable yet significant. Scottish salmon is marketed as something that comes from a pristine environment."
Why particularly Esso? They make 15.6 billion dollars a year in profit and they are not investing one dollar of that into clean renewable energy and the fact that they invested in President Bush's campaign and as a result of that Bush has backed out of the Kyoto Protocol is deeply disturbing to me. That they are sabotaging any international action on global warming is very frightening. I think that they are being a big bully and I think it's time we stood up to them.
You know I think as an individual you can feel really helpless in the face of environmental issues, I think as long as people know what is going on, this is the kind of campaign, like you can hear people beeping behind, they can really feel like they are doing something.
What would you say to motorists who are still buying from Esso? I'd say don't put a tiger in your tank
What would your message to Esso be? Be afraid, be very afraid.
Greenpeace comments on the standard letter sent out by the Japanese Embassy in response to letters from the public protesting at Japan's so-called 'scientific' whaling
In total, 1.5 million whales were killed by commercial whalers in the fifty years from 1925 to 1975, the year that Greenpeace began its long running campaign to stop commercial whaling. Many of the world's whale populations had been taken to the brink of extinction and this massive destruction was only stopped when the International Whaling Commission (IWC) imposed a moratorium on all commercial whaling in 1986. Of the nine countries still whaling when the moratorium decision was taken, seven had ceased by 1990, but two countries, Japan and Norway, did not.
Norway resumed commercial whaling in 1993 despite the fact that the International Whaling Commission (IWC) moratorium on all commercial whaling had been in effect since 1986. The political party in government in Norway at the time took the decision in order to stem the decline in its popularity with voters in northern Norway. It was able to do so because Norway lodged an objection to the IWC's moratorium decision in 1982 and so is not technically bound by it.
Japan's agenda within the International Whaling Commission (IWC) is self-evident - it wants a return to large-scale commercial whaling and is prepared to go to extreme lengths to achieve its goal. Unable to persuade the IWC to lift the current moratorium on commercial whaling Japan has, since the early 1990s, been openly operating a "vote consolidation operation"1 . The primary purpose of this operation is to recruit new member states to the IWC that will vote with Japan in favour of commercial whaling.
