Landed beaked whale being processed in Japan

Alert update: Tell Yahoo! to stop selling whale & dolphin

Internet giant Yahoo! is still selling whale products via its subsidiary Yahoo! Japan and we need your help to pressure it to stop.

Marissa Mayer was appointed new CEO of the company this summer, some weeks after we launched our report and campaign for Yahoo! to follow in the footsteps of Amazon and unequivocally ban all whale and dolphin products from its marketplaces.

Perhaps in the transition she was unaware of the huge outcry against the international company she now heads making money from the slaughter of cetaceans – please help us to put the issue firmly on her agenda!

Here are four easy but important ways in which you can play a vital role in telling Yahoo! and its new CEO that profiting from the slaughter of whales is unacceptable:

1. Send a Tweet

Marissa Mayer (c) World Economic Forum

If you’re a Twitter user, send Tweets to Marissa Mayer and to Yahoo!, via its general and corporate accounts, calling on it to ban all sales of whale and dolphin products from all sites and subsidiaries. You can compose your own, or use the sample Tweets below:

@marissamayer Please stop selling harmful whale products through Yahoo! Japan, immediately and forever http://ow.ly/boJmW

@Yahoo Please stop selling harmful whale products through Yahoo! Japan, immediately and forever http://ow.ly/boJmW

@YahooInc Please stop selling harmful whale products through Yahoo! Japan, immediately and forever http://ow.ly/boJmW

@YahooCare Please stop selling harmful whale products through Yahoo! Japan, immediately and forever http://ow.ly/boJmW

You can also follow EIA’s Twitter account @EIAinvestigator and reTweet our messages about this issue to your friends and contacts.

2. Send an email

Let Yahoo! know it is unacceptable to profit from the slaughter of whales by sending an email to the company and its CEO Marissa Mayer.

You can compose your own message, or use/adapt the sample email below, sent for the attention of Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer at media-inquiries@yahoo-inc.com and advertise.me@yahoo-inc.com.

You can also send a protest to Softbank, the major Japanese financial investor in Yahoo! Japan, at pr@softbank.co.jp.

 

To Marissa Mayer, CEO, & Yahoo! Inc management

Following the revelation in the Environmental Investigation Agency report Killing for Commerce http://ow.ly/boJmW that Yahoo! Japan is selling whale products, I am deeply concerned to learn that your company continues to profit from this cruel trade and respectfully request that the entire Yahoo! family immediately and permanently bans all whale and dolphin products.

Japan’s whale and dolphin hunting is a brutal, artificially sustained business which has no place in the 21st century, a view I would hope to find shared by your company.

You may be aware that some of the whale products sold through Yahoo! Japan originate from endangered species which have been granted international protection, while others have been shown to contain dangerously high levels of mercury and other toxins seriously harmful to human health.

Please demonstrate that you and Yahoo! genuinely care about our world, its oceans and their inhabitants by banning the sale of all whale and dolphin products, now and forever.

Sincerely

Your name here

 

3. Post a comment of protest on Yahoo!’s Facebook page

Whale product sold via Yahoo!

If you use Facebook, you can find Yahoo!’s main page at http://www.facebook.com/yahoo

The page is set up so that visitors cannot start new posts, but you can post a message registering your protest to those that already exist – you could adapt either of the above messages, or compose one of your own.

4. Sign the petition

EIA supporter and independent activist Melissa Sehgal has launched a petition, Yahoo: Stop Selling Dolphin and Whale Meat, at change.org which has already collected more than 130,000 signatures.

Rather than launch a further petition to the same end, we encourage all supporters to add their names to this one and so help it achieve greater prominence and impact. Sign the petition here.

 

Please circulate this protest to everybody you know and encourage them to help – the more people who protest to Yahoo!, the more the company is likely to respond in a positive and responsible way.

Thank-you for your continued help and action!