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NGOs warn against ‘contaminated’ whale meat
Environmental and animal-welfare groups are urging the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to persuade the World Health Organization (WHO) to act against the eating of whale meat.
These groups say that whale meat is highly contaminated with mercury and should not be eaten. But whaling nations say they already have health guidelines in place.
For the past weeks, anti-whaling activists have been trying to draw attention on the issue of consuming meat of smaller whales and dolphins, known as small cetaceans.
Small cetaceans, like tooth whales and pilot whales, are among those mostly contaminated and therefore a lot more toxic compounds tend to accumulate in these mammals’ tissues than in smaller inhabitants of the marine world, warn the NGOs.
Currently, the WHO does not have any guidelines regarding the consumption of whale meat, but its website does list mercury as one of the top 10 chemicals of major public health concern.
But the government of one of the nations that consumes a lot of small cetaceans’ meat and blubber, the Faroe Islands in the North-East Atlantic, a self-governing nation within the Kingdom of Denmark, says that people have been advised on the maximum amount deemed safe for the health – no more than one-to-two meals per month.
“It’s quite wrong to use the term ‘health hazard’,” Kate Sanderson, director of the department of oceans and environment of Faroes’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told BBC News.
Mark Simmonds of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society told BBC News that besides meat consumption being a threat to people’s health, killing small whales with the methods used and in such proximity of the UK coast was “simply unacceptable” for many Europeans.
He added that the Faroes were probably able to continue with the practice mostly because they were not part of the EU, even though Denmark is.
“But still, the Faroe Islands are only about 200 miles off the Scottish coast. It’s a lovely place and they are certainly seeking eco-tourism, presenting themselves to the world as a very green and attractive place to go to. But that seems to clash somehow with the on-going enthusiasm for whaling.”
He said that in order to address the issue, it was important to understand why the local population kept on with the centuries-old tradition of the whale hunt.
“To so many of us in the countries that are sitting next door it just seems totally unacceptable. It is very clear that this form of hunting is incredibly cruel. There is no way it would be accepted in the British Isles, it would be against the law for conservation and welfare aspects.
“Killing the animals that come to those waters to breed, killing the youngsters and the pregnant mothers – and this all happens within sight of each other. These are intelligent animals, they are fully aware of what’s going on around them,” he stressed.
But Ms Sanderson said that killing pilot whales was not worse than slaughtering other animals, and that the local authorities were always trying to monitor the hunt and “improve things”.
“The circumstances are not entirely controlled, obviously, but if you can ethically accept hunting of wild animals at all, than you have to accept that in some circumstances things don’t always go according to plan.”
“Red deer in Scotland – are they all shot? Some are shot and wounded and they run off into the forest and it takes hours for them to die. “
“That never happens at the whale hunt in the Faroes. They may take a couple of minutes to die, but certainly not hours, like hunted animals in other form of hunting can.”
Though the conservationists think it is rather unlikely for IWC to extend the whaling ban to cover small cetaceans, many hope that getting people to think about their health will do the trick.
Lorenzo Fantacuzzi
See more on www.bbc.com
Tags: environment, Europe, water, Wildlife & Flora
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