Environmental groups are claiming a major victory after the online retailer Amazon removed whale meat products from its site in Japan.

Amazon was accused of hypocrisy by the UK-based environmental investigation agency (EIA) after investigators found 147 whale products for sale on the site, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Seattle-based company.

The products contravened the firm’s policy of refusing to advertise unlicensed or illegal wildlife products, including endangered species.

Some of the items came from whale species listed as endangered, according to Amazon.com’s Unpalatable Profits, a report by the EIA and the Humane Society International.

Others were traced to Japan’s annual “research” hunts in the Antarctic, during which it slaughters more than 900 minke whales and a small number of fin whales.

Links to the products, which included whale bacon, whale jerky and canned whale meat, were active on Tuesday night, but had been removed by the following day after Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos, received tens of thousands of messages of protest via email, Twitter and other social media. [read more]

| words by Justin McCurry