The Institute of Cetacean Research ( ICR), a Japanese nonprofit organization for scientific whaling, started a campaign to promote whale meat consumption in the country to fund itself, reported local media Sunday.

The organization plans to advertise that the whale meat contains balenine, a dipeptide comprised amino acids that believed to enhance physical health and relieve fatigue, and is expected to sell the meat to Japan's defense ministry, said the Japan News, an English newspaper run by Yomiuri Shinbun.

Fund of the ICR, the primary whale-hunter group in Japan, is from the sales of whale meat and it could catch 1,200 minke whales and Bryde's whales in the Antarctic Ocean and the Northwest Pacific Ocean during peak period, racking up about 6 billion yen ( about 59.6 million U.S. dollars), according to the report.

Although the number has declined, whale meat stock has expanded to about 4,700 tons in 2012 from about 2,200 tons in 2003, according to the ICR's figures, while the price of whale meat remains higher than other foods.

"It would be a shame if we could no longer eat it (whale meat) due to a shrinking market," a professor at Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

Meanwhile, restaurants at Ebisu district in Shibuya, Tokyo also kicked off a whale meat festival, offering whale meat dishes, in an effort to revitalize the area.

Japan's whaling is a controversial issue as animal protection groups and many countries say Japan's so-called scientific research whaling is a cover for commercial whaling. Endi

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