Harpooned by hypocrisy

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Harpooned by hypocrisy

 

Until western states treat all animals ethically, the case against the whalers

will always be weakened

 

Peter Singer

Saturday January 19, 2008

The Guardian

 

The change in public opinion about whaling has been dramatic. Thirty years ago

Australian vessels would hunt sperm whales with the government's blessing - but

just two days ago an Australian customs ship, in Antarctic waters to video

Japanese whaling activities, played a key role in winning the freedom of two

anti-whaling activists. The hostage crisis began when they boarded a Japanese

harpoon boat on Tuesday. Because Paul Watson, the leader of the conservation

group Sea Shepherd, refused to cease his disruption of the whaling fleet, the

Japanese refused to return the activists. But the stalemate was broken two days

later when the Australian ship agreed to accept, and transfer, them.

 

In 1977 the Australian government, in the face of Greenpeace protests, appointed

the retired judge Sydney Frost to head an inquiry into whaling. As a concerned

Australian and a philosophy professor working on the ethics of our treatment of

animals, I made a submission: whaling should stop not because whales are

endangered, but because they are social mammals with big brains, capable of

enjoying life and feeling pain - not only physical pain, but distress at the

loss of group members.

 

Whales cannot be humanely killed: they are too large - even with explosive

harpoons it is difficult to hit the right spot. And because whalers are

reluctant to use large amounts of explosive, which would destroy valuable oil or

flesh, harpooned whales typically die slowly and painfully. If there were some

life-or-death need that humans could meet only by killing whales, perhaps the

ethical case could be countered. But everything we get from whales can be

obtained without cruelty elsewhere. Thus, whaling is unethical.

 

Frost agreed that the methods were inhumane, remarking on " the real possibility

that we are dealing with a creature which has a remarkably developed brain and a

high degree of intelligence " . Malcolm Fraser's conservative government accepted

his recommendation that whaling be stopped, and Australia soon became an

anti-whaling nation.

 

While Japan has suspended its plan to kill humpback whales, its whaling fleet

will still kill a thousand whales, mostly smaller minkes. Japan justifies this

as " research " - but the research seems to be aimed at building a scientific case

for commercial whaling; so, if whaling is unethical, then the research is both

unnecessary and unethical.

 

The Japanese say that he discussion of whaling should be carried out on the

basis of evidence, without " emotion " . They think that humpback numbers have

increased sufficiently for the killing of 50 to pose no danger to the species.

On this narrow point, they might be right. But no amount of science can tell us

whether or not to kill whales. Indeed, the desire to kill whales is no less

motivated by " emotion " than opposition to it. Eating whales is not necessary for

health or nutrition; it is a tradition some Japanese are emotionally attached

to.

 

They have one argument that is not easily dismissed. They claim that western

countries are just trying to impose their cultural beliefs on the Japanese. The

best response to this argument is that the wrongness of causing needless

suffering to sentient beings is not culturally specific. (It is, for instance, a

precept of Japanese Buddhism.)

 

But western nations are in a weak position to make this response, because they

inflict so much unnecessary suffering on animals - through culling (the

Australian slaughter of kangaroos), hunting and factory farms. The west will

have little defence against the charge of cultural bias until it addresses

needless animal suffering in its own back yard.

 

· Peter Singer, a professor of bioethics at Princeton University, is the author

of Animal Liberation and, with Jim Mason, The Ethics of What We Eat

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/animalrights/story/0,,2243452,00.html