According to a recent survey just released whale meat has been slowly put back on school lunch menus in Japan since 2005.

The meat is being made available at low prices in a bid to expand consumption, of the approx 29,600 public elementary and junior high schools nationwide offering lunches for students, 18 percent responded saying they had served whale meat in their lunches at least once through 2009 to March 2010. The Institute of Cetacean Research, which carries out the government's whaling, provided whale meat to local municipalities for school lunches at one-third of the market price, which was £16 per kg in 2009. Japan is hoping to increase consumption of whale meat as meat stocks of whales captured by the institute have piled up to around 4,000 tons. The annual amount of meat supplied domestically peaked at around 220,000 tons in 1962, but plunged sharply to around 1,000 tons in the 1990s after an international moratorium on commercial whaling was introduced in the 1980s. As a result, whale meat, which often appeared in school lunches in the 1970s, disappeared from menus.

However in 2005, Japan increased its annual killings but consumption remained slow. The institute and the Fisheries Agency have continued promoting the sale of whale meat to schools and medical institutions at a low price.