The International Whaling Commission (IWC) was established in 1948 at the initiative of the United States to establish a new world order in whaling. Initially 15 governments were party to the IWC with Japan at the time under occupation and without the right to join.
The Commission’s objectives included safeguarding the great natural resources represented by whale stocks and providing for the “orderly development of the whaling industry” recognising that whale stocks will increase if whaling is properly regulated.
But by the 1960s an anti-whaling movement had emerged in the West and the IWC focus started to change. In 1972, at the United Nations Human Environmental Conference held in Stockholm, the United States lobbied for a moratorium on commercial whaling; a moratorium that came into effect ten years later.
Japan initially took action to be exempt from the moratorium in accordance with Article V of the convention. Japan made the case that the moratorium infringed upon provisions within the convention in particular that decisions of the IWC be based on scientific findings – at the time the scientific recommendation was that the moratorium was unnecessary – and take into consideration the interests of consumers of whale product.
The United States threatened that unless Japan withdrew its objection it would revoke fishing allocation for Japanese trawlers off the west coast of Alaska. Japan withdrew its objection, but the US nevertheless phased out its fishing allocation to Japan.
In a book, ‘Reviving the Invisible Hand’, by Deepak Lal, a well known economist born in Indian, reference is made to the West’s obsession with promoting its “habits of the heart” including through the propaganda of the NGOs, most of whom espouse various environmental causes (pg. 233). Lal explains that the bread and butter of environment groups involves arousing the fear of “Apocalypse Now” (an enduring superstition of mankind) along with the “muddled cosmological beliefs of the West” about how one should live.
He refers to organisations such as the International Whaling Commission as transnational institutions created after the Second World War to legislate our Western morality around the world and that the infiltration and use of these institution by NGOs as source of potential serious disorder (pg. 234).
What the West doesn’t seem to understand is that while Japan, to again quote Lal, joined the bandwagon of globalizing capitalism, they have done this without sacrificing their culture or cosmological beliefs and see the demand from countries like Australia that they give up their tradition of eating whale – a tradition that can be traced to the Jomon Period of approximately 5,500 BC – as a form of cultural imperialism. Masayuki Komatsu and Shigeko Misaki in ‘Whales and the Japanese’ (The Institute of Cetacean Research, 2003) indicate that the Japanese don’t like others to dictate what “our habits should be” and suggest that the anti-whaling lobby is practicing ethnic and cultural discrimination (pg. 103-104).
At a summit of traditional Japanese whaling communities held in March 2002, it was affirmed that “the basis of Japanese whaling tradition and culture, characterised by the total utilization of the whales and a spirit of gratitude, should be maintained and perpetuated”.
The Japanese have a strong connection to the Shinto and Buddhist religions and believe that deep respect should be afforded animals that are killed so we may eat. This respect involves not wasting any of the animal and so the Japanese have made a virtue out of utilizing every part of the whale. There is also a cemetery for whales in the Koganji Buddhist Temple in Nagato City where the fetuses of whales that “did not live to swim in the sea” are buried and kakochos (books of the dead) dedicated to the whales that gave their lives for the well-being of humans. A service is held once a year in the temple to pray for the souls of the whales.
The Japanese want an end to the moratorium on commercial whaling and the right to continue to harvest whales. They see the moratorium as reflecting Western arrogance and believe that they will prevail, simply because “we are right”.
*****
This is my fourth blog post on whaling following my recent visit to Japan.
Deepak Lal was elected President of the Mont Pelerin Society at its 60th Anniversary Meeting in Tokyo.
The picture was taken in the garden of the Orion Hotel, Chinzanso, on September 12, 2008.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
I have no qualms with a whale fishery. The Minke whale population is currently 1.4 million. There doesn’t seem to be any relevant argument to exclude a fishery from being developed and a market set up for whale products.
Any fishery would be subject to regulation and quotas. Some whale species may not be in a position to be harvested, but considering that Minke whale numbers are estimated at being almost twice the amount of their pre whaling era numbers… The stock numbers issue is does not apply in their case.
I honestly cannot see why a modern meat eating society such as Australia would object to the use of whales for food.
I can understand the vegetarian’s arguments. But they are ideological or religious in context and therefore irrelevant to the debate.
there are just some animals you shouldnt eat. …….
The two smartest marine species, Orcas and the Octopus/squid species both eat whales. If it is OK by them then it is OK by us.
The IWC is already dead. What we’re seeing these days is just the “dead cat bounce”.
The days of dietary tyranny are over. If Australians have a right to dictate what Japanese people eat then Indians can prevent us from eating Beef and Moslems and Jews can prevent us from eating Pork.
Interestingly, the clown that heads up the IPCC, of Indian Hindu descent, has called for the world to stop eating beef, you guessed it, to reduce emissions of Methane.
He is apparently under the belief that the 280 million cattle in India do not burp methane due to the fact that they are not eaten by humans. And that is a clear indication of the IPCC’s grasp of cause and effect.
The head of “Gonzo Central” seems to think that by not eating cattle, the numbers of animals burping methane will actuall fall, not increase.
He also apparently seems to think that cattle compete with humans for access to our vast rangeland grass reserves. Cattle are only fed on grains for the last few months of their life to fatten them up for market but these ignorant morons seem to think that all cattle food can be eaten by humans. (Well, yes, if the IPCC nutters get their way we might all be grateful for a good feed of lawn clippings, especially from the parts where the cats pissed, yumm, ummn.)
And to top it all off, he seems to believe that by switching humans to a diet of lentils and beans there will be net reduction in the total volume of the planetary “Fartosphere”.
This guy
I think the West’s entrenched tradition of proselytising religion may well be one of the problems that needs to be sorted out. The NGO’s and Environmental movements are nothing other secular variations of the same mind set.
One reason 17th Century Dutch merchantmen had such a long period of exclusive access to the Japanese market was their refusal to mix religion and business. The Spaniards and Portugese didn’t (among others) and never got a look in at Japan.
Christianity and Islam are the two major proselytising religions – as are the Greens – and while Christianity seems to have run out of a little steam, Islam hasn’t.
Strange fact is that it’s England which seems to have spawned the worst and best of human endeavour – the worst in people like Marx, The Webbs, GBS and the rest of that motley bunch of useful idiots in the Fabian Society. The UK gave us geological uniformitarianism and now the IPCC and climate change anxiety.
What next I wonder.
I don’t see a sentimental affection for big-brained mammals as quite in the same order of malignancy or irrationality as most of the rest of the environmentalist agenda.
What I do object to though is people being gratuitously disrespectful and nasty to the Japanese. The same people who seem to think that diplomacy is a substitute for military strength feel compelled to forsake all diplomacy in an area where it is needed. Knowing that the Japanese don’t now threaten us they seem to want to go up and flick her nose.
This may have been part of the shock that was going on with the “we thought whale-meat was a tabboo” line of thinking. If it isn’t a tabboo then we have been horrendously disrespectful to a country who takes this honour business pretty seriously.
Purely from a self-interest point of view these are people we have to be tight with. All our powers of diplomacy ought to be employed in that direction.
But then there is the fact that she has been an exemplary country. Leaving pure barbarism behind for two generations now. And just focusing on capital accumulation. She has technology that we can use for ventures to retrieve frozen methane from international waters.
And here we are letting hoodlums harrass her ships in what we claim are our waters. This is irresponsible. Bad things can happen at sea. We make a claim that is a bit presumptuous for starters. And then we won’t follow through the logic of that and maintain legality within those waters. We imagine farcically that our courts decisions ought to be respected by the Japanese when she does not recognise our claim, nor do we have more than an arbitrary hold over that territory. Its all so appalling. No-one was minding the store diplomatically. Not until last week when they decided they needed more subs at least. That was about the first glimmer that someone was minding the store.
If we were to simply convince her that, in her own interests she ought not SUBSIDISE whaling than the whaling would reduce to a fraction of what it is now. And the other thing would be a gentle request that the harpoons be developed which don’t allow the whales to suffer. Thats all. A bit of friendly persuasion in the context of showing respect.
Graham – Some comments.
1) This “honour business” doesn’t really exist in modern Japan, at least in my experience. Incidentally, also a lot of westerners talk about “face”, and some suggest this is a reason for Japanese “intransigence” over the whaling issue. Ironically, I see the situation as exactly the reverse. Australia backing down over whaling would be a huge loss of “face” for her, after years of moral grandstanding. It’s not going to happen.
2) “in her own interests she ought not SUBSIDISE whaling”
This is a problem in the dialogue… the Japanese believe that research whaling is legitimate, whereas it’s the Aussie govt’s official position that it is not. It’s a strange state of affairs, because from the Japanese perspective, research whaling should not be funded by an industry body, or it would potentially come up with results biased in favour of the industry. In fact the ICR used to be funded by the Japanese whaling industry, but this is no longer the case. Yet, the anti-whalers would have the situation reversed (at least purportedly, their real goal is actually “no whaling”, not “no subsidised whaling”).
This isn’t such a big issue though, as what Australia thinks is basically irrelevant. The Japanese aren’t going to maintain their sustainable use philosophy, and at the same time drop the research whaling. It’s one package, the whole or nothing.
3) “the other thing would be a gentle request that the harpoons be developed which don’t allow the whales to suffer.”
This wouldn’t be so much a request, as the Japanese have been working on this for years. Take this for example from the 1983 IWC meeting:
http://luna.pos.to/whale/iwc_chair83_20.html
“The new model penthrite harpoon is expected to be fully employed by Japan in the 1983/84 Antarctic whaling season, and the 1984 coastal season. Japan intends to continue research and development of further improvements…
Many governments congratulated Japan on the success of its programme to replace the cold grenade harpoon, including Australia, the Netherlands, St Lucia, Seychelles, USA and Argentina. ”
Continuous effort to improve killing methods is what humaneness is all about, in my view, and it’s not like the Japanese have stopped trying. Ironically under commercial whaling operations the killing efficiency would undoubtedly be improved, yet Australia is one of the nations demanding that the moratorium be maintained.
This all adds up to give me the impression that the Aussies care more about defending their anti-whaling stance out of the feel-good factor in it than out of rational concern for whales at either a population level or an individual whale level. This is obvious when one considers the way in which Australia as a country treats animals.
OK David, I’ll bite. Why would killing efficiency be improved in commercial whaling operations?
steve,
Various reasons, but first I’ll ask if you are aware that in the research whaling operations, targeted whales are selected via a random method, as opposed to the way in which whales are selected in commercial operations?
“They see the moratorium as reflecting Western arrogance and believe that they will prevail, simply because “we are right”
The Japanese expect us to kneel in praise of them exporting the practice of sacred slaughter of marine creatures, in this case larger mammals to all parts of the Globe unchallenged?
C’mon Jen & David, we are not all suckers downunder. Get real, what’s one man’s tucker in the raw could be another’s pleasure in the living flesh.
David: sounds to me like you’re about to start speculating. They’re still going to be harpooned and dragged back to the ship either way, no?
You are correct to argue that a small (very small) commercial fishery of minke whales could be sustained without endangering that species.
Westerners like me are also correct to argue that:
a. the method of killing is always likely to be inherently unreliable with regard to speed and efficiency;
b. food which is obtained in a way involving unnecessary cruelty and which is no longer needed to help feed the population in any significant sense is best not taken at all;
c. our “sympathy” for whales as a whole is not actually irrational: to a very large extent it is as a result of the fact that quite a few species were nearly wiped out by overfishing. Ensuring that no species risk extinction again by leaving all of them alone is just as “noble” as killing a whale and eating or using every bit of it.
d. Japan has shown reckless or intentional disregard for other fishing quotas (I refer to tuna overfishing in particular.) They are not showing much goodwill when it comes to responsible fishing generally.
e. Encouraging nations to have a cultural chip on the shoulder about not being told how or what to eat is not actually the way to encourage less cruelty and preserve more species. Yet that is what the Japanese fisheries department does, completely with your support.
What bollocks, Steve fb. My understanding is that a grenade exploding in your head is a very quick way to go. The whale wallies have tried to pass off the inevitable twitches and spasms as some sort of evidence that the animal is undergoing a slow painful death. Hence your misguided concern about whales being dragged back to the boat. So get this through your sloppy intellect, by the time the whale is dead, they don’t give a toss about where they are or how they are being transported.
Even if a grenade in the head doesn’t cause instant death, it will certainly cause instant unconsciousness, rendering them oblivious to the circumstances of the last few minutes it takes for the brain to cease functioning due to lack of oxygen.
As I have pointed out on other threads here, the fact that a headless chook might still be running about the yard does not alter the fact that the centre of cognition, the head, is completely lifeless on the chopping block.
“David: sounds to me like you’re about to start speculating. They’re still going to be harpooned and dragged back to the ship either way, no?”
Being an idiot as a way of life.
If we want to increase their numbers, it would pay to make them domestic. Produced like pigs, sheep, cows, rats, etc. Nothing seems to expand a specie’s numbers as well as a good association with Homo sapiens. Find a way to grow themcommercially and get humans interested in them as food seems a good bet for increasing numbers of a species.
Mott: I would have thought this may have been obvious without my having to say it: you cannot guarantee the grenade is in the head when you are shooting a moving target. (And if you want to bring up the parallel between shooting ‘roos and harpooning whales, I would suggest that it is in practice easier to get to a wounded roo and put it out of its misery than it is a whale.)
By the way, I liked how your “dumb turd” comment got through moderation. It reminds me of the smell of your generosity of spirit around here.
“I would suggest that it is in practice easier to get to a wounded roo and put it out of its misery than it is a whale.”
Not if the whale has a harpoon in it and a line attached it’s not.
…and if it doesn’t have a harpoon in it, you missed and didn’t wound a whale.
Some people just can’t think but it never stops them expressing an opinion.
Iceclass, and Mott, why don’t you just look at the video at this site for an illustration of a harpoon that doesn’t hit the head, and whale still breathing while it’s at the side of the boat:
http://tinyurl.com/5qcx6x
Hi gavin,
I’ve no problem with people who like to enjoy whales in the living flesh. There are various places to go whale watching in Japan too, indeed I hope to go sometime.
I don’t accept your complaint about the Japanese harvesting whales in “all parts of the Globe”. Firstly they are only doing it in two areas. But moreover, the ICRW was signed precisely for the purpose of regulating such activities globally (when it was a much bigger business than it is today or is likely to be again for the forseeable future), and Australia not only signed this international agreement, it remains party to it today. Sure, you and other Aussies are welcome to change your minds. Just don’t expect the Japanese and everyone else to toe your line, unless you think signing international agreements is only just for show.
steve,
Yeah they are going to get harpooned either way and how the whale gets on board the ship without it being dragged / winched in is beyond me. If you know of some useful dematerialization technology that could be used as a substitute for hauling whales then it could possibly be applied.
a. yeah the killing method is not likely to ever be 100% perfect much like any hunting, but hey you seem like a really smart fella so perhaps you have already developed the improvements?
b. we covered that before, whaling isn’t unnecessary and in terms of cruelty there’s no contest in my view.
You can’t take your subjective opinion and then force people from different backgrounds to comply, unless you declare war.
c. yeah I accept that people think wiping out species is a bad thing, I agree. I agree that the blue whale and humpback whale, fin whale etc should have been protected back in the 1960’s and 1970’s (much earlier would have been better but hey can’t change the past, only the future). But I don’t accept that it is rational to forgo ever again harvesting those species once they recovery to safe levels, given that past mistakes which led to the over harvesting have been learned from.
“Ensuring that no species risk extinction again by leaving all of them alone”, you say. If you open your eyes you’ll recognise that today the extinction threats to whales have nothing to do with directed hunting. The endangered species are dying because of ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear. You can complain about Japanese whaling until your face goes blue and your head explodes with a big POP, but that isn’t going to address the REAL issues. Even you yourself accept that some number of minke whales can be safely harvested.
d. yeah Japan did not do a good job of regulating it’s tuna industry. But imagine this – permit ultra conservative whale harvests under international rules where even Aussies get a say in the regulation of the operations. It looks like a big win for the whalers, but then Aussie turns around and demands that the same management principles be applied to tuna, and indeed various other mismanaged fisheries. This would not be such a bad scenario now, would it?
e. nonsense
John F. Pittman,
There are species of whale that are increasing even without human interference. Even the Antartic blue whale is increasing, and all we are doing is not hunting them right now. Farming is an option, but the status quo where we harvest them in a conservative manner from the wild, where the stock size permits it, is perfectly fine. More whale meat would be better, but at the current time being able to hunt as many whales as we can be 99% sure is sustainable is sufficient. We can still make up the shortfall in food with all that excess beef that is being produced down in Australia, and other whale substitutes.
Farming seems like it could be expensive, but if someone can make it economically viable to do so then I wouldn’t object though.
Is there a reputable scientific study estimating populations and trends over time? What is their best assessment level of accuracy? Are stocks stable or increasing? I would only have concerns with hunting if populations were in decline.
More Greenpimp spin, Steve. Whales can submerge for quite long times so the greengimp claim that the whale asphyxiated is bull$hit. What they have filmed is the usual twitching after death has taken place. And frankly, even if it did take 10 minutes, it is still nothing compared to an Orca hunt or all the other forms of death endured by most whales.
You folks need to come to terms with the fact that all living beings are eventually eaten by something after death. Even you, Steve, it might be only bacteria in a hole in the ground but you will, never-the-less, eventually be a meal for something. Get used to it.
Will Nitschke, it depends which stock of whales you are talking about.
“I would only have concerns with hunting if populations were in decline”, you say.
In order to get a harvest, a population generally has to decline somewhat, it’s a tradeoff. My concerns are when a population under harvest declines more than one would expect it to, under the assumption that we are hoping to ensure a stable and high level of harvest over a long period of time, with low risk of unintended depletion.
Ian, I didn’t watch the video but is it the one with the Greenpeace in their rubber ducky floating around in the hunting zone?
Ian, does “twitching’ include breathing? Looks like distinct spray coming out of the blowhole to me.
And by the way: I haven’t said anything at all about the legitimacy of anti-whaling tactics by the Sea Shepherd and the like. There may well be a case to be argued that, in that video, they prolonged the suffering by delaying the time it took to get the whale on board. But my point about the unreliability of the kill is still valid.
Ian: yes, things get eaten by other things, sometimes in a cruel way. I suppose because sharks eat humans I can eat my neighbour’s leg for dinner? Come on, your argument doesn’t have much to do with what levels of cruelty humans should inflict on food we don’t need to eat.
An earlier post of mine seems to have disappeared. It linked to David Attenborough’s comments on the cruelling of whaling:
http://tinyurl.com/663b6h
It also made the point that, even at 1980’s pre-moratorium levels of about 15,000 tonnes a year, (about double what it is now) whale meat consumption in Japan would still represent a small fraction of 1% of all protein eaten there. (I’m talking beef, pork, chicken, fish.) That’s what I call “unnecessary”. David’s version of “necessary” would work just as well to justify expeditions to Africa to bring back elephant steaks.
“on the cruelty of whaling” is what I meant in the last post, of course.
What’s your definition of “cruelty” Steve?
Purely a subjective term isn’t it? Because it would be different to mine.
Killing anything could be termed “cruel”. Indeed if someone was to kill a dog in the street in an instantaneous manner… They would be charged by the RSPCA with “Cruelty” to an Animal. Not “needless” killing of an animal.
However, considering that Humans are meateaters and our Culture is a meateating culture. Killing animals for food, is a necessary part of life.
The methodology of the killing is simply a function of the practicality….. No more or less.
steve,
1)
I agree that the killing method has unreliable elements. But I don’t see how you get from the unreliable nature of a method of killing a wild free ranging whale to thinking that whales should not be killed at all. Yours seems to be a completely arbitrary way of thinking (mine is too though, I guess).
Even with respect to the killing method, the “cruelty” is not deliberate, they are trying to kill the whales as best as they are capable. I doubt you would argue that the cavemen ought to have gone vegan because they weren’t capable of killing animals without the “cruelty” you talk of?
But, it doesn’t matter. You don’t need to eat whale if you disagree that eating whale is better than eating your Aussie beef or chicken or whatever. This is the beauty of the situation. You can complain and whine about what people in other places do, but you can’t change it short of a war declaration.
2)
“even at 1980’s pre-moratorium levels … whale meat consumption in Japan would still represent a small fraction of 1% of all protein eaten there”
The moratorium is hardly an appropriate point of reference. That time was at the tail end of a long, long period of overharvesting of larger baleen whale species under poor management regimes. Blue whales, humpback whales, Fin whales, Sei whales – they were all protected years BEFORE the moratorium was introduced, not WHEN it was introduced. The
minke was the primary species that got protection with the moratorium, and with hundreds of thousands of them it’s very arguable that the moratorium was “overkill”, so to speak.
Anyway, it’s misleading (and you have probably been misled) to equate the side effects of restrictions on production as indicating a lack of necessity (that and the fact that the price of whale meat sky-rocketed at the time).
Although the figures are not central to this matter, your figures are wrong too. I don’t know what your 15kT is supposed to be, but the sum of domestic production and imports was 3kT in 1988, 6kT in 1987, 18kT in 1986, 32kT in 1985, 46kT in 1980, 79kT in 1977, 105kT in 1975, 132kT in 1971, and 233kT in 1962 (according to MAFF). This is illustrative of the situation that I described above of decreasing production well in advance of the moratorium (which was basically only on minke whale hunting).
But looking to the future, now we have the RMP (and are capable of designing suitable management procedures on similar principles), so with whaling starting again the situation will progressively head back in the right direction for some time, as various whale stocks continue to recover to more productive levels. The result will be that substitutes for whale meat such as Aussie beef will have difficulty maintain their levels of sales.
And the Aussies will then again surely be complaining about how “unnecessary” whale meat is, for their former beef customers.
J. Hansford, Yeah it seems subjective to me. It seems that what some people see as “cruelty” is often a function of variables such as “does the beholder have a culture of eating the animal being killed”, and “is the beholder tolerant of foreign cultures”. The hypocritical and intolerant therefore end up on their moral high horses. They get off on that though it seems, I can’t blame them.
Some replies to Jennifer on the whaling issue on my blog:
http://annimal.bloggsida.se/
Steve, the fact that the whale still passed breath does not mean it was conscious. Infact, the last and only breath I saw in the film could well have been the animals final breath.
David, it was the goons in inflatables near the bow with a shot whale out front, camera from helicopter above. The bull$hit was all in the commentary, all highly subjective and emotive but zero substantiation.
Steve seems to think that a whales brain is right up front over the jaw. In fact, a grenade harpoon shot like the one in the video would explode at back of brain disrupting, if not severing all links to the rest of the body, like a neck shot to a human. But it was all that was needed to allow Steve’s imagination to run riot.
In all likelihood the most the whale got to think about it all was “what the f@#% was tha..” before lapsing into unconsciousness. Whale wallies need to get it through their heads that an external explosion of that magnitude will render them unconscious so an internal one works much faster.
On the issue of cruelty: I thought it fairly obvious that the slower the death of a relatively intelligent creature, the crueller it is. That’s not a very subjective attitude.
The issue of whether my culture eats whales doesn’t have much to do with the cruelty issue: I would never happily eat dog, but could not attack the practice on cruelty grounds if their slaughter was quick and efficient.
Ian: is there any subject you are not an expert on? Forgive me if I take David Attenborough’s opinion over yours.
steve, explosive harpoons are as quick a method of killing as you can get for whales currently. So it’s not so cruel. At least if you’re going to complain go complain about the “aboriginal subsistence whaling” before you whine about the stuff using better methods that even achieve instantaneous death in the majority of cases.
Plus you are skipping over all the cruelty that your favourite meals are subjected to before they are killed. Whales are free range wild animals, they aren’t pumped full of growth hormones, nor are they artificially inseminated.
Plus you are skipping over the fact that there are tons of meat on a single whale. At least in my view, you couldn’t come up with a measure of cruelty per life versus meat obtained that put whale meat in a worse light than any farmed animal you might munch on.
Yes but Dave; Steve’s favorite pop star says it’s cruel so it must be. Right?
oh, and Steve: whales aren’t “intelligent”. My pet chicken googled the matter.
Got any more cliched red herrings you’d like to chuck in the mix?
Oh good lord, another armchair expert at everything.
“Ian: is there any subject you are not an expert on? Forgive me if I take David Attenborough’s opinion over yours.”
LOL! There have been discussions on this previously, including the issue of cruelty, time-to-death, struck ad lost, killer whales/sharks hunting other animals and how this pathetic argument comes up when it is convenient, whale stocks, sustainability…..All in the archives. There is a recent paper from a vet regarding the issue of activists and harpooned whales and the (again convenient) argument they prolong the suffering.
“oh, and Steve: whales aren’t “intelligent”. ”
It stands to reason then that if whales aren’t intelligent and they are “cruel” to other whales, that humans who are s’posed to be intelligent shouldn’t be.
“Oh good lord, another armchair expert at everything.”
There are plenty of them here Steve, although David does have good insight into the issue.
A classic cop-out from Steve. Now he just labels everyone he cannot rebut as “another expert” and takes his ball home.
And for your information, Steve, I have just had a sister in-law take two months to die and she was only 59. I have another neighbour going the same way and her youngest child has only just started school. That is cruel. Life can be very cruel.
Lets face it. Greenpimp has been exposed for portraying twitches and spasms after death as evidence of cruelty before death. You, and they, also tried to imply that the manner in which a whales body was dragged to the boat, after death, somehow offended the animal when it was still alive. And gullible people like yourself just lapped it all up because you wanted to lap it up.
The Attenbogan might portray whaling as cruel but he is never around to help put starving ‘Roos out of their extended misery in times of drought despite the fact that all agree the numbers are well in excess of the natural (pre-settlement) footprint. Cheap thrills for the punters, the new eco-soma.
Ian: sorry to hear about your recent circumstances. But I do have to say that, you do realise don’t you, that you make it abundantly clear that you will never be persuaded no matter what material is presented. (A famous naturalist’s opinion – “ph’aww”. Videos showing a harpooned whale breathing – “it was probably unconscious”.) When people like me stop arguing with you, it might just be because we can see the pointlessness of it all, not because we can’t turn up other material to support our case.
steve, you may as well give up anyway, whaling isn’t going to stop no matter how much non-whalers complain about it.
Of course, complaining about it is an option. But I believe a better option would to be to display tolerance, through that gain trust, and through that trust, seek to have what you regard as improvements made. Even if you can’t “win”, you can at least “lose” by less a margin.
David: you seem extraordinarily confident of the long term direction of Japanese public opinion on this, and quite undeservedly so I believe. (I have family connections with Japan: I am not a complete outsider.)
I have been thinking about your idea that it is better for a whale to live a free range life and then die a bit more slowly, than be a farm animal that dies quickly. It overlooks the fact that farming does offer an animal benefits too: protection from predation, medicine to stop it falling ill. Farming is not all downside for all animals by any stretch.
If you were restricting the argument to specific animals in specific countries, you would have a stronger case. I think there is strong case that there is more- or-less routine cruelty in factory pig farming in most countries, but improvement is slowly being made. I tend to think, though, that the answer is to force more humane farming practices, not just substitute one form of suffering for another.
Back in my original posts, I did deliberately refer to beef, both because it’s what whale apparently most tastes like, but also because (as far as I can tell), there is very little concern about the way beef cattle are raised in most countries.
Your argument about it being better to work from the inside rather than the outside, so to speak, also seems unduly optimist to me.
This site spouts a lots of nonsense about environmentalists . I recommend you to read about the case on Pasko , the former Soviet naval officer , that spread light about the Russian dumping of radioactive waste in the Pacific. For this he was sentenced for treason and espionage for Japan , and had to spend 4 years in a labour/ prison camp in Russia.
He is now an environmental journalist, and has written pieces like ” The descendants of Gulag” etc. He has also been awarded a prize from ” The Journalists without Borders”
Read more here:
http://annimal.bloggsida.se/diverse/the-pasko-case-the-environmental-whistle-blower
steve,
Well I think the pendulum has been swinging back in favour of whaling, probably ever since the minke whaling moratorium came into force. At the moment the anti-whaling movement is pretty descredited here in Japan, thanks mostly to itself (violence on the high seas, trespass and theft in pursuit of an imaginary scandal, etc, making top news this year, should take some time to repair that damage or a new more rational anti-whaling NGO to establish itself as the leader).
“Your argument about it being better to work from the inside rather than the outside, so to speak, also seems unduly optimist to me.”
I see it in terms of being pragmatic or not as opposed to being pessimistic or optimistic, but I don’t think working from the outside with the Japanese (or Norwegians) is going to get them to change their basic policies. I think it’s the least likely way to “success”, but then I am in favour of whaling 🙂
Back on to the cruelty issue:
“I have been thinking about your idea that it is better for a whale to live a free range life and then die a bit more slowly”
That’s a worst case scenario. The best case scenario is concluded with an instantaneous death. But also keep in mind that this applies in less than 1% of all cases. Whales die of other causes in the other 99% of cases. Even with the gradual increase of whaling (that at least I foresee) it’s probably still never likely to exceed 3~4%. If you put me in a whale’s flukes I’d be happy with those odds.
Now, if farming animals is good for their welfare and we wish to be “humane”, then it seems we have an obligation to farm every species so as to protect them from predation. No death except to feed ourselves. Mmmm, nah that doesn’t sound right to me. Whaling seems more natural. Also, I’m not certain that animals living in the wild precludes our ability to improve their welfare in terms of disease prevention, etc. In any case, I want us to work within nature, rather than control it.
“improvement is slowly being made”
This is certainly the case with whaling. Things are much better now than they were when Aussies were still killing whales for the oil.
“the answer is to force more humane farming practices, not just substitute one form of suffering for another.”
I agree with this statement. Seeking to improve whaling methods makes sense, and switching over to some other imperfect alternative(s) does not. And even though (as I think) whaling is better in terms of animal welfare, we still don’t have enough whale resources to eliminate all beef production. And the market will play a role. Over time I think whale supply/consumption will be returning to some previous, higher level, but whether quotas are completely utilised or not remains to be seen – it depends on just how high the quotas can be, how many species whaling is permitted on etc. As the international trade is rebuilt, I think we’ll see the Norwegians catching more of their quota though, for sure. It’s probably just a matter of time before China starts showing greater interest in whaling too, actually when we were at the restaurant I think there were some Chinese people also eating there (didn’t see what they were eating though).
“I did deliberately refer to beef, both because it’s what whale apparently most tastes like, but also because (as far as I can tell), there is very little concern about the way beef cattle are raised in most countries.”
Right. People should be concerned about the way farmed animals are raised, not just concerned with how we kill them. And I reckon we do the best by leaving the animals out there in the wild until we need the food.
clarification: those odds of getting harpooned would be a max for any given year, with 100% probability of eventual death from something.
Why are anti-whaling countries to be tolerant of whaling countries like Japan when whaling countries are not tolerant of anti-whaling countries?
Whaling is cruel, no question about it.
It’s all good and well saying leave animals out there in the wild, but in many cases there is not much wild left or it has been severely degraded and the animal populations face increasing challenges.
Steve, you complaint that I do not accept “A famous naturalist’s opinion” makes it painfully obvious that you lack the capacity to distinguish between fact and opinion, betwen rhetoric and reality.
The Greenpimp video showed part of the sequence from an animal twitching on the end of a grenaded harpoon and the animal no longer twitching. The greenpimp commentary claimed that this sequence was evidence of the whales passage through a slow, supposedly cruel death.
But for that to be the case then they are also claiming that whales do not undergo body spasms after death. Where is the evidence for that?
The fact is, from the moment it is accepted that some form of post mortem spasms can take place then the burden rests with Greenpimp to indicate when, prior to the ending of these spasms, the actual death took place.
And once it is accepted that mamals can be unconscious while still breathing then the burden rests with Greenpimp to advise the viewer when conscious movement and breathing stopped and when unconscious movement and breathing started.
The simple facts of the matter are that Greenpimp had no way of determining when the whale lapsed into unconsciousness and it follows that they had no way of determining when the whales awareness of their condition ceased. That is, they had no idea if the whale was suffering at all.
But the record shows quite clearly that their so-called “intellectual curiosity”
extended only so far as they needed to support their initial prejudices.
So lets face it, Steve, you are giving up because your vague ideas and vacuous impressions have been properly tested and have failed to stand up under scrutiny.
And Gosh, Holly. So which part of the southern ocean, and the pacific ocean, is no longer there or has been severely degraded?
Holly, huh? The anti-whaling countries are welcome to have domestic laws against killing whales, I’ve not heard the whaling nations complaining about that.
But anti-whaling countries are complaining about whaling countries catching whales in accordance with international agreements which even the anti-whaling nations themselves have agreed with.
So I can’t agree with or understand your top statement.
Also I don’t see how the humpback whales (for example) went from being “Endangered”, to “Vulnerable”, to “Least concern” by even the IUCN’s Red List criteria, if their environment is in such bad condition. But I agree, we should keep whale environments in good shape. That way humans can enjoy the benefits of their sustainable harvest.
Ian: I note that Attenborough was actually speaking about a written report that detailed the cruelty inherent in modern whaling. Granted, this report was done by the Humane Society and other “not disinterested” parties. But then nor are the Japanese.
Anyhow, the point is that Attenborough wasn’t just talking about his own impressions from watching a video.
I think you sound quite ludicrous when you start talking about how it’s Greenpeace which has the burden of proving that a moving, breathing mammal is not unconscious – especially when you say their “intellectual curiosity” didn’t extend to investigating that question. I suppose the Japanese are going to allow them unfettered access to the whale to check this out?
(Incidentally, even if they were allowed on board, that Attenborough article mentioned that it’s not an easy thing to tell exactly when a whale has died or lost consciousness. Doesn’t surprise me, but I assume you’ll feel there is some magic way of telling.)
Incidentally, could you care to explain why your understanding of the “reality” of whaling is any better or first hand than mine?
Chock video from a pig farm in the US ( in today’s Norwegian media) :
http://www.tv2nyhetene.no/utenriks/article2227609.ece
steve, I did a search for the comments from Attenborough and it seemed to me he was talking in reference to some comments made back in 1940:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3542987.stm
(quote)
“Sir David’s foreword quotes Dr Harry Lillie, a ship’s physician on an Antarctic whaling trip in the 1940s.
Dr Lillie wrote: “If we can imagine a horse having two or three explosive spears stuck in its stomach and being made to pull a butcher’s truck through the streets of London while it pours blood into the gutter, we shall have an idea of the method of killing.”
(end quote)
They sure weren’t using penthrite grenade harpoons back in the 1940’s, the Japanese didn’t invent this technology until the 1980’s.
I imagine there’s lots of technology from the 1940’s that isn’t considered to be good enough these days.
It is already self explanatory, Steve. I simply pointed out that Greenpimp was making assumptions in its commentary that all of the twitching was associated with conscious animals that were aware that they were suffering a cruel, extended death. For a number of posts you sought to contest this but have finally confirmed that identifying the points of lost consciousness and death are problematic.
But that, of course, did not deter Greenpimp from allowing a false and misleading impression to be formed by the viewer.
Readers can form their own view as to which of us has the better grasp of whaling reality by the content of our posts.
>Readers can form their own view as to which of us has the better grasp of whaling reality by the content of our posts.
They would have done that years ago Mott! LOL!!! Trophic cascades…hmmm….whales=cows…hmmm…
Yes Steve, we know why you are ‘giving up’. There has to be some reason apart for the obvious regarding futility.!!!
So the Attenbogan was knowingly conveying an impression of whaling that was at least 60 years out of date? Yep, that would be par for the course for him.
And surprise, surprise, Travis doesn’t even begin to mount a relevant case. But of course, he’s the designated Greenpimp troll here so what can one expect.
Once more for the record. Greenpimp have no way of telling if an animal is alive, conscious and suffering or unconscious, even dead, and twitching. But that doesn’t stop them portraying the whole sequence as some marine version of “the torture of Bambi”.
Ian (& David): why don’t you try following my link and reading for a change. The fact that it was a 60 year old quote used in the report was clearly identified and hardly deceptive. I have now found the link to the report by the humane societies that Attenborough was referring to:
http://tinyurl.com/3fvm9p
I haven’t read all of it yet, but it’s interesting stuff. (And as I acknowledged before, of course it’s coming from a specific viewpoint, just as David is when he chows down on a bit of whale.)