Agriculture minister Shinjiro Koizumi mentioned Friday the nation would oppose any name by the European Union so as to add eels to an endangered species listing that will restrict commerce.
Eel is eaten worldwide however is especially widespread in Japan, the place it’s historically served grilled after being coated in a sticky-sweet sauce.
Koizumi advised reporters that the nation fastidiously manages inventory ranges of the Japanese eel in cooperation with neighboring China, Taiwan and South Korea.
“There’s a ample inhabitants, and it faces no extinction danger as a consequence of worldwide commerce,” he mentioned.
Japanese media have reported that the EU may quickly suggest that every one eel species be added to the Conference on Worldwide Commerce in Endangered Species (CITES), which limits commerce of protected animals.
There are 19 species and subspecies of eel, lots of them now threatened as a consequence of a spread of things together with air pollution and overfishing.
In 2014, the Japanese eel was listed as endangered, however not critically endangered, by the Worldwide Union for Conservation of Nature, which cited elements together with habitat loss, overfishing, air pollution and migration boundaries.
Defending the animal is difficult by their complicated life cycle, which unfolds over an unlimited space, and the various unknowns about how they reproduce.