The Inuit Chief shuffles out of his kayak onto the ice. With the assistance of his tribesmen he hauls the dead walrus from the sea onto the ice floe.

The walrus hunt has exhausted their bodies but filled their spirits. Women and children from the tribe gather around the dead mammal.

Children run around laughing and playing while the women chatter about the layout of the ceremonial rugs and the men talk bravado and slap each other and recount tales of the hunt.

Before the first cut is made on the walrus, the shaman leads a prayer ceremony and everyone is quiet.

The ceremony consists of a cluster of fur-clad humans, kyaks, harpoons, rugs and dogs, and a fat, warm walrus, with long white tusks and a drab brown body.

Blood covers the ice from the harpoon wounds on the walrus.

The prayer over, the ceremony continues.

The entire clan is salivating patiently at the though of the warm walrus fat rolling around their mouths.

The Chief, pulls open a reindeer skin bag and from inside, retrieves another bag, this one not traditional, but scientific.

The bag has the letters WFP-AD written on the side.

The Chief pats an Elder on the back, who then takes a knife and cuts out the walrus' eye.

From the technical bag, the Chief pulls a small white satellite dish, a length of coaxial cable, an electronic instrument with crocodile clips on cables hanging from it, and some small bottles of coloured liquid.

While the Chief readies the instrument, the Elder places next to him a piece of fat from behind the wulrus's eye.

The Elder then wipes his hands and connects the cable to the antenna and moves the antennae a few meters away.

The chief takes the piece of walrus eye fat, drenches it the liquids, red and orange, then clips the two probe to the walrus fat.

The instrument takes a series of measurements from the fat and transmits these to a laboratory via the satellite dish.

The lights of the instrument twinkle and after a few minutes the box lights up in a particular configuration and an LCD screen shows the reply from the laboratory.

“Its no good”, says the Chief out loud to his tribe.

There is a moan from the crowd and even the Chief steels himself from disappointment.

The Elder takes the instrument and reads from it.

"The walrus has elevated levels of PCP, Tri-butyl tin, Dieldrin 2-4-5-T and Polonim 20”, he says to the tribe.

"They are sending a fresh one".

With these words there is much mumbling and complaining from the tribe.

The Elder takes a big knife and slices open the walrus.

He searches around inside the the piles of warm, steaming guts, and cuts out a big hunk of liver.

The Elder places the liver in a plastic bag and packs it with ice.

Then the tribe push the walrus back into the sea.

The Chief hands the Elders a plastic tube and the Elder walks a few metres along the ice edge and strikes a red smoke flare against his leg.

He leaves it billowing on the ice and returns to the clan.

They sit silently and dejected together.

The thrill of the hunt has evaporated, even the children are silent.

After about thirty minutes in this sombre state, a noise is heard that becomes steadily louder.

It is a helicopter.

Suddenly, the chopper is nearby, deafening, a flurry of ice and snow belts the Inuit tribe.

The chopper positions itself above the smoke flare and hovers a few feet from the ice.

On its side are the letters WFP-AD, and underneath the words: World Food Program Arctic Division.

The Elder takes the bag of walrus liver and places it in a receptacle lowered from the chopper cabin.

He steps back and a shute opens and a large brown object falls from the back of the chopper onto the ice with a lound thud.

The chopper rises and the Chief sees a glimpse of the pilot, a young Caucasian man with an affable smile.

When the chopper is gone, the tribe pick up and move to the walrus that has been delivered by the helicopter.

They reassemble their ceremonial knives and mats around the beast and wait for the shaman to begin the ceremony again.

This time it is not necessary to test the beast for toxins.

This one has been pre-tested and is known to be uncontaminated.

The Chief raises the ceremonial knife after the prayer.

He plunges the knife into the wulrus's neck to begin the dissection.

As the knife presses through the brown skin, the Chief, expresses a further disappointment.

“No, not again”, shouts the Chief, throwing the knife into the ice.

The Elder puts his hand on the Chief's shoulder, moves him aside, pulls the knife from the ice.

He cuts the walrus again.

“The bastards have done it again”, he says turning to his clan.

There is a loud sigh of displeasure from the whole clan.

They have been here before.

“They haven't defrosted the wulrus properly”, says the Elder.

“We are going to have to eat it cold.”