The Killings in Faroe Islands

 

I received an email recently on this unique, deep-set culture for an autonomous island province of Denmark. With a history that stretched over 1,500 years, there lies a practice to trap and kill a few hundreds of long-finned pilot whales every year!

Traditionally, this is necessary to secure scarce food source. Contemporarily, this has become a festival celebrated by the ethnic Faroese; it is such a hunt that children are often given a rest day from school!

How it works?

According to Hoax-Slayer:

"When a school of whales is spotted close to shore, messengers are dispatched to inform local inhabitants of the particular island involved. A formation of small boats is then used to drive the whales ashore, where they beach themselves in the shallow water and are killed by waiting islanders. A special whaling knife is used to sever the animal's spine near the dorsal fin."

Personally, i find this practice inhumane but i do respect the many cultures in the world. Should we force our values on others just because we don't think it's right?  We should stop eating meat (chicken, pork, mutton, beef, fish) if we really want to eradicate cruelty towards animals!

Is killing a dolphin any less cruel than killing a cow? Or a chicken? A torturous long-drawn death versus a quick death; both painful. Which is better?  

There was an argument by the Faroese that in the modern world, humans have become so far removed from the harsh realities of animal food production that they have formulated unrealistic notions of how food actually gets to their tables (as quoted from Hoax-Slayer).

No matter how much i detest this social culture of whaling, i cannot deny the above mentioned argument. All i need is a video showing how pigs are slaughtered and i will wean myself from pork for the next few weeks or even months.

That, my dear readers, is the cruel reality.

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In contrast to the email(s) that most of you have received, this cruel slaughtering does not involve Calderon dolphins. Instead, the victims are the long-finned pilot whales that belong to the dolphin family.