IS THERE A CULTURAL FACTOR IN WHALING?

[Guest guest]

*

 

* ** *Helene Guldberg *

*http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/423/

*<http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/423/>

** *Stop weeping over whaling

The attack on Japan for continuing to hunt whales is cultural imperialism

dressed up in PC lingo. * **

 

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*On 18 June, on the Caribbean island of St Kitts, a slim majority of nations

on the International Whaling Commission (IWC) backed a resolution supporting

the repeal of a 20-year moratorium on commercial whaling. *

 

*Although it was a non-binding vote, as a 75 per cent majority is needed to

overturn the worldwide ban, the anti-whaling bloc – with Australia, New

Zealand and Britain at the helm – warned that the vote should act as a

'wake-up call to the world'. Japan has been most harshly criticised, accused

of 'buying off' smaller nations with promises of aid packages in return for

their support in overturning the moratorium. *

 

*Having been brought up in Norway – a nation of people not known to be

particularly sentimental about the hunting and killing of animals – I find

all the fuss about whaling rather bemusing. Why should whales be singled out

for special status? In fact, Norway has for years openly defied the 1986 IWC

moratorium on whaling, carrying on regardless. Japan, on the other hand, has

found a more subtle way of getting around the moratorium – claiming that it

continues whaling only in the 'name of science', although it makes use of

the whale meat for consumption, regularly selling it in shops and

restaurants. *

 

*So what is all the fuss about? The objections to whaling on the basis of

its 'non-sustainability' don't hold much water. Although in the nineteenth

and twentieth centuries some whales were hunted almost to extinction

(including the blue whale), scientists recognise that many whales – such as

the minke that is hunted by Norwegians – are relatively plentiful. In fact,

the IWC is maintaining its ban on whaling despite the advice of its

scientific committee. *

 

*As the non-sustainability argument has lost its force, the anti-whaling

lobby has come up with new lines of attack. It talks about animal welfare.

Whaling is, after all, a rather bloody and gory business and it isn't for

the fainthearted. As one Norwegian whaler said, in typical Norwegian

matter-of-fact fashion, 'Of course there's a lot of blood. Whales are big

animals.' When it comes to hunting – and all sorts of animals are hunted by

humans around the world – animal welfare is a pretty strange concern. As

Joanne Massiah, minister of food production and marine resources in Antigua

and Barbuda, points out, the term 'humane killing' is a bit of an oxymoron.

*

 

*Or the anti-whaling lobby talks up the impact of whale meat on human health

– despite the fact that people have been eating it for centuries with little

evidence of adverse effects. *

 

*The anti-whaling campaigns spearheaded by Australia, New Zealand, Britain

and others have little to do with any hard evidence that whale meat is bad

for people; nor are they driven by anti-hunting sentiments in general (after

all, these countries all kill animals for meat). Rather, this is about moral

grandstanding, a way of appearing pure and righteous by trying to tap into

the widespread concern for the wellbeing of whales. *

 

*Rune Frøvik of the High North Alliance, a Norwegian umbrella organisation

representing whalers, told spiked: 'The cultural imperialists would have

whales exempted from the sustainable-use principle – an exemption that

would, quite simply, place whales above and apart from the animal kingdom to

which they obviously belong.' Although whales are often attributed with a

human-like intelligence, there is no scientific evidence to support such

claims. *

 

*Yet still these beasts of the ocean stir up a great deal of passion. There

is continual bickering and backbiting at IWC gatherings. Chris Carter, New

Zealand's minister for conservation, said he was deeply disappointed that

several Pacific island nations – including The Solomons, New Zealand's

biggest bilateral aid recipient – have allowed themselves to become pawns in

Japan's 'long, expensive campaign to achieve a whaling majority'.

Anti-whaling nations and pressure groups have responded to the Caribbean and

Pacific island states' vote by calling for tourists to boycott the islands.

*

 

*Adopting the slogan 'Save the whale' is an easy way for the anti-whaling

nations to establish their green credentials and take the moral high ground.

It is also a rather handy and PC way for these nations to distinguish

themselves from the apparently 'uncivilised' whale-eating nations of the

world, to draw a line between their 'humaneness' in contrast to the bloody

antics of the Japanese and others. *

 

*Yet why should these non-whaling nations have the right to tell whaling

nations what they can and cannot do? As the science journalist Stuart

Blackman said a while back on spiked : '[Whales] are to the green movement

what cows are to Hindus – except that Hindus aren't trying to force the rest

of the world to give up beef.'*