A quota of 500 animals has been set after last year’s record hunt which most seem to have agreed was excessive. 500 still seems like a lot for subsistence hunting and cultural continuation as claimed. I struggle with the modernisation of equipment against the claim of tradition. It feels uncomfortable.
China is busy doing plenty of bad things to animals and people. We aren’t doing a great job of boycotting their produce. I would argue because the media isn’t currently stirring us up about it. But there’s plenty going on there, the likes of which haunt me.
I don’t like that they’re killing these animals but it’s not for me to stop a community doing something they’ve done for generations. If they go at it with a clear conscience. My lens is not their lens. I fail to buy all my goods from only ethical and sustainable sources. Britain as a whole certainly hasn’t boycotted every other unethical trader and nation and community.
I’m not sure what we do is very much better - We try not to upset our animals 99% of the time. Sometimes we do it deliberately, stress them out to move them, tag, slaughter, trim feet, to pull them out of fences and ditches (which we put there). My mum watching farming programs says when she helped on her grandfathers farm - animals mostly gave birth by themselves whereas today loads seem to need assistance. She says it’s a travesty that so many mothers need assistance now. Same with all these dog breeds with problems.
The wild harvested animals live their lives free of hunters’ influence apart from the final hours of their lives. I believe some deer are farmed in an almost comparable way - they live extensively with little human interaction apart from receiving winter forage and the odd bit of care then are herded into a smaller field one day and those for slaughter are picked off by a riffle.
I don’t understand this whale/dolphin cull, I don’t like it. I wouldn’t be eating it as I assumed heavy metals like mercury accumulate in their tissue.
I don’t understand the fur lust of trappers in Alaska and Canada. Some of the stuff Mongolian herders do seems pretty brutal too. I’ve seen some videos and articles but I don’t feel it’s my place to comment on other cultures simply because the media has flagged them into the lime light and says it’s terrible.
Also Fleecewife, what is the climate change mitigation factor please?
I don't think that just because other countries are doing 'bad things' to animals that we should not have an opinion on a country which is our near neighbour. The UK has expressed an opinion on fox hunting which is now banned, years ago bear baiting was banned, bull fighting, dog fighting, badger baiting, and in general cruelty to animals, deliberate or by lack of action is prosecuted in our country. The Faroes actually have a picture of the beaches where they hack hundreds of animals to death with knives on their
tourist brochures, making it a tourist attraction. In the past killing whales and dolphins was an annual hunt to provide winter supplies to keep the population fed. The Grind as it's called was carried out by fishermen using rowing boats and some basic equipment, bludgeoning and hacking the animals until they eventually died. That was gruesome but there was at least a meaning behind it. Now it seems they use motor boats to round up vast quantities of animals to kill just for the fun of it. I think we absolutely all
should have an opinion on this. Claiming that this is tradition, when they find it hard to sell on the meat for people to eat, partly because it's toxic and partly because many young people in the Faroes are very much against the slaughter is an empty claim. We don't eat dolphin or whale meat here because like horse meat it is against our culture. What we do do is because of a trade agreement with the Faroes is we eat fish caught by those same fishermen, thus supporting their economy. The Faroes have a better standard of living by far then we do, so don't imagine they are on the bread line. Yes their Government has set a quota of 500 dolphins to be killed every year. Five Hundred! I don't eat Tuna because some dolphins can be accidentally caught in fishing nets - both Tuna and Dolphins are highly intelligent creatures, as are whales. Making them suffer the horrible fear and pain as they are rounded up, beached and killed over the course of many hours is unthinkable to me.
Steph, the climate change relevance is to do with the balances in the oceans. Our oceans are warming and becoming more acid, there is a danger that the currents we rely on might stop or change direction. Our seas are being polluted and over fished which leads to further imbalances. Our world oceans are one huge ecosystem. if you remove or destroy any part of that ecosystem, in this case large numbers of whales and dolphins, then that will add to all the imbalances caused by other factors. Whales in particular travel vast distances around the Earth, dropping faeces into the water, which in turn are a food source for the small species that many fish and other cetaceans rely on for food. When a whale carcase sinks to the ocean floor it provides food for countless species.
I am surprised to discover that there has been no assessment of whale or dolphin numbers in the waters around the Faroes carried out since 1997, 25 years ago and yet the islands claim that their hunts are sustainable, with no evidence at all other than wishful thinking.
Topic: Mass slaughter of cetaceans in the Faroe islands - Gov debate (Read 3528 times)
