Questions about whaling

For homework, I asked you and your partner to come up with 30 questions about your controversial issue. Here are some questions that I came up with about my issue:

• How far back does whaling go in Japan? Is it really a part of the Japanese "cultural fabric"
• Do some communities in the world need to do whaling in order to survive?
• If countries such as the US and Portugal have abandoned whaling, despite having done it for hundreds of years, why has Japan found it so difficult to stop whaling?
• Historically, which countries in the world have engaged in whaling?
• Have whales always been caught as a food source or for other reasons?
• Is whale meat fit for human consumption or is it contaminated with mercury, as some scientists claim?
• Does the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries really believe that it's necessary to kill whales in order to know how many of them there are?
• What is the International Whaling Commission and what is its function?
• How many kinds of whales are there in the world? Which ones are threatened or endanger of extinction?
• Is the claim of the Japanese government that whales are partly responsible for the falling catches of fish (because the whales are eating them) justified?
• Is killing whales for food the same as killing cows for food?
• Is it economically profitable to catch whales?
• How much damage to Japan's image, and to the economy, has its whaling program caused?
• What sort of PR has the Japanese government (esp. the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries) done to justify their insistence to continue whaling?
• Australia is especially adamant that Japan stop its "research whaling" in the southern ocean. Why is that?
• What sort of actions have environmental (or animal rights) groups taken against countries that still engage in whaling?
• Are extreme actions, such as those by the group Sea Shepherd against Japanese whaling vessels, ever justified?
• Is it hypocritical to eat meat but object to the slaughter (harvesting?) of whales?
• Which whale species have become extinct and did commercial whaling cause their extinction?
• Besides whaling, in what other ways are whales threatened?
• Should we take into account the intelligence of whales when we consider whether or not they should be slaughtered?
• Do whales ever attack humans and, if so, why?