Unfortunately home to grindadrap [0], one of the most cruel traditions in the world where hundreds of white dolphins are hunted with high speed motor boats and painfully slaughtered for sport.
[0] https://www.seashepherdglobal.org/latest-news/slaughter-dolp...
I dislike Sea Shepherd as an organization, due to their distasteful methods (and personal bias, being a Faroese resident). But I spoke with several of their volunteers during one of their campaigns, and was pleased to realize that, as individuals, their hearts are mostly in the right place. Nearly all of them claimed to be vegan, which I feel does give you legitimate ethical grounds from which to criticize grindadráp.
However, if you don't oppose the general consumption of meat, I don't find the argument against grindadráp compelling. It yields more meat per killed animal than most, and the slaughter itself is arguably no less humane than most commercial meat production (not a high bar, I admit).
In terms of publicity, grindadráp suffers from being inherently more visible than commercial meat production. Personally, I think this is a positive thing. It confronts you with the fact that meat doesn't magically appear in a supermarket freezer - if you want to eat meat, then by definition a living animal has to die. The visibility of grindadráp has prompted conversations with my young son about where meat comes from, and the animal welfare consequences of eating it.
Most animals these days are killed as efficiently as possible - a quick stun for chickens, a bolt through the skull for cows, etc.
The problem with commercial meat production is pretty much always the mega-farms that have them in horrible conditions during life. It's just cheaper, easier, and results in tastier meat to quickly perform the slaughter.
Note that "religious meat" can be cruel for certain animals as well. Chickens are still a quick stun, IIRC, but cows are brutalized - they basically slowly drown in their own blood, because of the way they are slaughtered to be Halal.
And then companies try to push for more Halal meat, because there are fewer rules to account for, when it comes to Halal (great way for them to skirt the law, legally). The chicken supposedly tastes better, though.
The only reason it tastes better is because its not factory farm sourced in the same way and youre closer to the slaughter date when consuming it. Massive suppliers control the entire chain including slaughter. Halal suppliers or live chicken suppliers tend to be smaller operations.
Should be banned. Too bad European countries are bending over backwards to accommodate just as backwards beliefs.
Hogs are routinely slaughtered by asphyxiation in a room pumped full of co2. By comparison the dolphins are getting off easy.
Switching the gas to nitrogen would result in a relatively peaceful passing by comparison. Shame.
Handling nitrogen is more dangerous than CO2 for the same reason it is more humane for the animals; you don’t notice you’re being asphyxiated. Not that it is impossible or even particularly difficult to handle nitrogen safely, but it would incur a cost (training, equipment, ...), and inevitably result in accidents when these costs are skimped on.
Unless legislation changes, it's simply better business to let the animals suffer.
You dont need pure no2 for pigs. You can mix in a substance that makes it stink to high heavens so it is safer.
Alas the rest is true re costs being higher and legislation changes being required to force an industry shift.
The high levels of mercury and other heavy metals doesn’t dissuade you from eating the meat?
It does. I eat small portions, rarely. My son has fortunately not expressed any interest in eating it, and I won't encourage him to.
> one of the most cruel traditions
Not as cruel as factory farming though. I find it weird how people obsess over grind when pigs are treated a lot worse at a hugely larger scale. Maybe the problem is it is out in the open?
I think dolphins fall into the category of charismatic megafauna.
They are not “painfully slaughtered for sport”.
They are killed and butchered by trained people only with specialized tools that minimize suffering, and the meat is distributed to all participants.
Whale hunting (and dolphin hunting) tends to come up any time the Faroes are mentioned, and I don't understand why it's such a cause celebre. I don't see how this is worse than any other form of hunting or fishing, and frankly I prefer it to most forms of animal agriculture.
Industrialized whaling has done massive damage to global whale populations, but the Faroes are tiny and (to my knowledge) their hunting practices do not have a significant ecological impact.
It's probably because a lot of people see whales and other large sea mammals (and some large land mammals) as much closer to humans than say, tuna. I'm not going to argue about whether or not that's a correct take.
And yes, there are plenty of very arguable inconsistencies (eg: eating pigs and cows is okay, eating horses is not) in how people look at animal consumption, but I don't particularly think that invalidates ethical concerns over whaling.
(edited for missing words)
What do you mean eating horses is not OK, in Switzerland we have plenty of horse butchers, you can find horse meat products like salami in all bigger supermarkets.
Its not consumed in same amounts as beef for sure, but its not shunned by most. And yes there is no logical reason to eat beef (especially calves if we consider the cuteness factor) but not horses, horse meat is even healtier.
I'm not sure how "it's okay in <country x>!" is really relevant, TBH.
There are plenty of places where it's not considered okay by a significant portion of the population, so it's a pretty valid to use it as an example of an inconsistency.
You said eating pigs is ok, massive numbers of countries don’t have pork on the menu. You said eating beef is ok, yet go to India and try that
Your culture thinks eating horse is bad, other cultures it’s fine, but beef or pork is bad.
Even dog and cat are quite common in many countries.
It's an example of an inconsistency that people have when it comes to what they're willing to eat.
It does not have to be a universal truth.
Cultural bias is definitely relevant in a discussion about why people do or do not choose to hunt and/or eat specific meats.
The point of horses was an example of an inconsistency. Saying "I have a counter example" doesn't create a relevant discussion.
It doesn't make the horses example any less of an example of an inconsistency.
Edit: not only that but the whole point of me bringing up inconsistencies was to say that just because they exist doesn't mean people can't have ethical concerns about whaling (or other kinds of animal hunting / farming).
Horses also eaten in Iceland
And Belgium.
Curious contrast about eating horses. My grandmother used to live in a very humble area of my hometown and I was there often. One day, when I was a kid, there was this agglomeration in the main avenue in that neighborhood: people lynched the butcher because for years he sold everyone horse meat for cow meat, and eating horse is taboo in my region of Brazil. Years later, when I moved to Switzerland I was very surprised when I first saw packaged horse meat for sale in the supermarket right next to cow meat, pork, etc.
>eating pigs and cows is okay, eating horses is not
This is the situation in the UK. Some people trace it back to chivalry, where horses were very expensive and mostly owned by the nobility. But I don't know if that is the real reason.
Although it turned out that British people have been eating plenty of horse. They just didn't know it:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21375594
I think it is because of the popularity of riding, people are used to seeing horses in that role. Not quite pets, but in a relationship to people closer to that of dogs and cats than that of farm animals.
People ride horses in France, so I'm not sure that is it.
Just makes it look like people jump on the virtue signalling bandwagon when they espouse opinions that aren't broadly consistent with their actions. Like eating beef several times a week, but feeling compelled to bring up the killing of pilot whales in amounts that are not at all concerning from a species conservation point of view.
I don't think many people live entirely ethically consistent lives. I sure don't.
That doesn't necessarily make every ethical boundary they try to have "virtue signaling".
I think a lot of it has to do with how they do it. I believe a lot of other whaling operations catch and process whales at sea. In the Faroes, whales are driven into shallow water and killed near land in sight of people who aren't accustomed to such things.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45209587
Traveling to other cultures involves being exposed to seeing things you aren’t accustomed to. In many ways, that is the whole point.
I’m not defending the Faroese here (nor casting aspersions on them, either), more just saying that it’s your responsibility to research the customs of the places to which you travel, and to not go if you think you might not like what you see.
It's also fine to say it's cruel as fuck.
> "The squealing from the whales was horrible. They were putting hooks on ropes in their blowholes to pull them in and then hacking at them with knives."
There are cruel practices in almost every country, including the US or [wherever you are from]. Society evolves over time. Different countries overcome different problems at different points in time, and the time differences are just noise on the grand timeline of history.
The developed world has more or less eradicated slavery, but it was commonplace just 0.5% ago on the human civilization timescale. Some countries eradicated it at 0.4% and others at 0.6%.
Whaling is pretty weird these days. On the one hand you got Japan, which is well known for it, and on the other is Norway, with a similar operation, but remains pretty unknown. They also spend loads of money researching "beneficial effects of whale products" (or something along those lines), to justify the continued whale hunting
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think dolphin hunting is not a tradition. It was not possible until faster motor boats were available.
That's the reason I will never visit the islands. I can't do much, but I sure can't give them my money