Today

The International Whaling Commission's (IWC) meeting in South Korea has been considering whether to relax the ban on commercial whaling. But is the question as clear-cut as it might seem? Christine Lee of World Animal Day has been finding out.

"Japan has been lobbying the IWC for changes including permission for certain coastal communities (which, it is claimed, are suffering because of the ban) to resume commercial whaling, an increase in the number of whales permitted to be caught for 'scientific research', and a change from open to secret ballots in IWC voting procedure: all these proposals have been rejected.

Japan's delegates have already indicated a refusal to comply and the stage is set for conflict. So what has led to this stand-off?

Background

During World War II, commercial whaling ceased, but resumed afterwards to deal with food shortages in Japan. The IWC was formed in 1946 to regulate whaling, and has resulted in repeated conflict between the whaling nations (Japan, Norway and Iceland) and countries such as Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the US.

By 1982 it had become clear that many whale populations were close to extinction, so the Commission agreed on a moratorium on commercial whaling, which came into effect in 1986. The moratorium has been largely successful from a conservation point of view, but the whale-hunting nations continue to hunt whales for 'scientific purposes'. Once the scientific research is over, however, the meat generally ends up being prepared for consumption.

Whale meat has been a staple in Japan’s diet for thousands of years. Before the moratorium, it provided about 50 per cent of the nation’s protein intake, but now its scarcity has made it a delicacy for the rich. Seafood is, of course, important in Japan, the amount of land for agriculture being limited. Japan argues that stocks are now large enough to support whale-hunting and that moreover its culture and diet should be respected by other nations.

More questions than answers?

There seem to be two separate issues here; firstly, to what extent whales are endangered and to what extent would lifting the moratorium damage their population. This is something the IWC’s scientists need to monitor closely and the whaling nations need to accept and abide by their rulings.

Hunting a species to extinction is irresponsible and foolhardy – history has shown us that all too often. But there is also another question of whether it is acceptable to hunt whales at all, and this is where the issue begins to become clouded.

As well as the conservation angle, those who oppose whaling cite the fact that whales are intelligent and gentle creatures, that the methods used to hunt are inherently cruel, and also that eating whale meat is potentially damaging to human health, given that the level of ocean pollution today is such that excessive amounts of chemicals are stored in whales’ body fat.

But to play devil’s advocate for a moment, why is it acceptable to eat, for example, chicken, which is often intensively farmed and involves immense cruelty to the animal, but it is unacceptable to eat whales, which live in complete freedom?

Why is it acceptable to eat, for example, burgers, the production of which often involves deforestation in order to provide grazing land, but unacceptable to eat the meat of a wild creature whose consumption does not involve any environmental damage?

Is it better to eat an animal who has lived its life in freedom in its natural environment than one that has spent its life in captivity being given artificial hormone-laced food then transported for hours, sometimes day, even weeks, on end to its death?

Is it in fact right that nations such as the UK, the US and Australia, who were in fact largely responsible for hunting whales to the edge of extinction up until the early 20th century, can take the moral high ground in this issue?

Personally I hope that the ban continues and that international pressure is brought to bear upon the whaling nations. But I would also like to see the same pressure upon the burger chains responsible for destroying vast tracts of rain forest, upon those who remove the beaks and claws from chickens and cram them into tiny cages so that they never see the light of day, those who produce foie gras, those who transport sheep and cattle for weeks on end by land and sea…. The list goes on.

Surely it is high time that humankind in general looked at its place in the food chain and re-assessed its attitude to food animals accordingly, rather than demonise one nation for being 'different'."