Gryphon Brewing makes a fair point. A few years back greenie Tim Flannery - now heading the Climate Corp, or Climate Commission, or whatever the hell it's called - wrote a little tract calling, amongst other things, for a resumption of commercial whaling, basically because whales are no longer in danger of extinction (and I can't remember the details - he may also have been arguing that legal whaling would be easier to control and regulate).
There's also sometimes an anti-Japanese note that creeps into this - oh, those barbaric Japanese, if only they were like us enlightened western nations, we'll tell them what to do. I remember reading how the Japanese are typically horrified that westerners eat stuff like roast lamb - those cute widdle lambs! Yet they're not prosecuting us about that, are they?