- Animal welfare groups from around the world presented
a report on whaling yesterday that aims to take the argument back to basics:
the cruelty of the kill.
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- The report, likely to be seen as one of the most significant
contributions to the whaling debate for many years, is a detailed scientific
study of how much violence is needed to slaughter the world's largest animals
in the open ocean.
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- Its premise is that much of the argument in the annual
conferences of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) now tends to
be about whale population statistics, and this has obscured the main issue
- that the act of killing the great whales, usually by explosive harpoons,
isunacceptably cruel.
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- The report,Troubled Waters, comprehensively reviews the
animal welfare implications of modern whaling activities. It has been produced
by 142 animal welfare organisations from 57 countries, including several
from Britain, who have come together in a new coalition,Whalewatch. Its
avowed purpose is to bring the issue of cruelty back to the fore at the
next IWC meeting in Italy in July, and maintain the international moratorium
on commercial whaling.
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- The moratorium has been in force since 1986, but is increasingly
being challenged by the three main pro-whaling nations - Japan, Norway
and Iceland. Since it was introduced, more than 20,000 whales have been
killed by the whaling countries - by Japan and recently Iceland under the
guise of "scientific" whaling, and by Norway as a simple commercial
hunt. In this coming year they are likely to kill more than 1,400 animals
between them, mostly minke whales.
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- But the new report does not concern itself with numbers.
It sets out to demonstrate, in extensive technical detail, that the great
whales are so big and powerful that the amount of force needed to dispatch
even one of them is unacceptably inhumane.
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- Britain's best-known naturalist, Sir David Attenborough,
stresses the point in his foreword to the report. "The following pages
contain hard scientific dispassionate evidence that there is no humane
way to kill a whale at sea," says the broadcaster.
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- "Dr Harry Lillie, who worked as a ship's physician
on a whaling trip in the Antarctic half a century ago, wrote this: '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. The gunners themselves admit that if whales could scream,
the industry would stop for nobody would be able to stand it.' The use
of harpoons with explosive grenade heads is still the main technique used
by whalers today."
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- Sir David suggests that any reader of the report should
"decide for yourself whether the hunting of whales in this way should
still be tolerated by a civilised society."
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- Peter Davies, director general of the World Society for
the Protection of Animals, one of the leading groups in the coalition,
said: "The cruelty behind whaling has become obscured in recent years
by abstract arguments over population statistics. The fact is that, whether
it is one whale or a thousand, whaling is simply wrong on cruelty grounds
alone."
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- The technology used for killing whales has altered little
since the 19th century, when the grenade-tipped harpoon was invented. The
penthrite grenade harpoon, the main killing method today, is fired from
a cannon mounted on the bow of a ship. It is intended to penetrate a foot
into the whale before detonating. The aim is to kill the animal through
neurotrauma induced by the blast-generated pressure waves of the explosion.
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- However, if the first harpoon fails to kill the whale,
then a second penthrite harpoon or a shot from a rifle is used as a secondary
killing method. But given the constantly moving environment in which whales
live, there are inherent difficulties in achieving a quick clean kill,
the report says, and despite its destructive power, the whaler's harpoon
often fails to kill its victim instantaneously, and some whales take more
than an hour to die.
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- The difficulties in hitting a whale with any degree of
accuracy can be seen in the margin for human error. For example, despite
similar killing methods being used, Norway reported that one in five whales
failed to die instantaneously during its 2002 hunt, while Japan reported
that the majority of whales - almost 60 per cent - failed to die instantaneously
during its 2002-03 hunt.
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- Tests to determine the moment of death of a whale are
inadequate, the report says, and the question remains whether whales may
in fact still be alive long after having been judged to be dead. The full
extent of their suffering is yet to be scientifically evaluated.
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- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=499374
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- Comment
- From Lee Meyer
- 3-10-4
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- Why can't the same argument be made for abortion?
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- I would love to see this story with all the harpoon references
changed to "abortion."
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