Mick Hartley

Peter Singer’s CiF article explains well enough why Japan’s continued whale hunting is unethical:

In 1977 the Australian government, in the face of Greenpeace protests, appointed the retired judge Sydney Frost to head an inquiry into whaling. As a concerned Australian and a philosophy professor working on the ethics of our treatment of animals, I made a submission: whaling should stop not because whales are endangered, but because they are social mammals with big brains, capable of enjoying life and feeling pain – not only physical pain, but distress at the loss of group members.

Whales cannot be humanely killed: they are too large – even with explosive harpoons it is difficult to hit the right spot. And because whalers are reluctant to use large amounts of explosive, which would destroy valuable oil or flesh, harpooned whales typically die slowly and painfully. If there were some life-or-death need that humans could meet only by killing whales, perhaps the ethical case could be countered. But everything we get from whales can be obtained without cruelty elsewhere. Thus, whaling is unethical.

Frost agreed that the methods were inhumane, remarking on “the real possibility that we are dealing with a creature which has a remarkably developed brain and a high degree of intelligence”. Malcolm Fraser’s conservative government accepted his recommendation that whaling be stopped, and Australia soon became an anti-whaling nation.

While Japan has suspended its plan to kill humpback whales, its whaling fleet will still kill a thousand whales, mostly smaller minkes. Japan justifies this as “research” – but the research seems to be aimed at building a scientific case for commercial whaling; so, if whaling is unethical, then the research is both unnecessary and unethical.

The Japanese say that he discussion of whaling should be carried out on the basis of evidence, without “emotion”. They think that humpback numbers have increased sufficiently for the killing of 50 to pose no danger to the species. On this narrow point, they might be right. But no amount of science can tell us whether or not to kill whales. Indeed, the desire to kill whales is no less motivated by “emotion” than opposition to it. Eating whales is not necessary for health or nutrition; it is a tradition some Japanese are emotionally attached to.

But he still thinks there’s an element of hypocrisy in Western criticism:

They have one argument that is not easily dismissed. They claim that western countries are just trying to impose their cultural beliefs on the Japanese. The best response to this argument is that the wrongness of causing needless suffering to sentient beings is not culturally specific. (It is, for instance, a precept of Japanese Buddhism.)

But western nations are in a weak position to make this response, because they inflict so much unnecessary suffering on animals – through culling (the Australian slaughter of kangaroos), hunting and factory farms. The west will have little defence against the charge of cultural bias until it addresses needless animal suffering in its own back yard.

In a way this is fair enough, and it’s surely reasonable to expect Western critics of the Japanese to make every effort to minimise unnecessary animal suffering in their own backyard. But I don’t see why this should be tied to the issue of whaling. I don’t see it as hypocritical to oppose whaling even if the Western record as regards cruelty to animals is less than perfect, in the same way that it’s not hypocritical to criticise human rights violations outside the West even when the West’s record isn’t spotless.

For a start, Singer slightly misrepresents the argument by playing down the issue of whales being endangered. Even if for some species of whale such as minke the threat is distant, the numbers of whales overall are still hugely down on the figures from the time before industrialised whaling. These are long-lived animals with typically mammalian breeding patterns: short-term losses can be devastating, while long term gains are painfully slow. By placing all the emphasis on the fact that whales are large-brained social animals, you’re inevitably inviting the come-back that, well, so for instance are pigs – and look what we do with them. But surely the rarity of whales, as compared to the ubiquity of pigs and other familiar farmyard animals, is bound to feature as an element in the argument.

But we can go further. Yes, we’re against whaling because they’re large-brained social animals; yes, it’s because they can’t be killed humanely; yes it’s because they’re rare – but also it’s because they’re magnificent creatures. And despite the Japanese dismiisal of such sentiments as “emotional”, we shouldn’t be cowed into down-playing that fact. On the contrary we should be quite clear about it. I don’t believe anyone, no matter what culture, is immune from the power of seeing a whale surface nearby, or from feeling the majesty of such huge creatures moving with such grace.

The Japanese attempt to pretend this whole issue is scientific is, as everyone knows, complete bullshit. It’s nothing to do with scientific research. It’s all a kind of petulant Japanese exceptionalism. They used to eat whale, but they don’t even do much of that any more. The fact that their arguments are such palpable nonsense makes their defence that much shriller. By accepting their “Western hypocrisy” jibe, as Singer seems to do here, we give their argument too much credit.

The truth is that we’re never going to arrive at an objective judgement about killing animals for food, unless we take the extreme Buddhist view that it’s always wrong. There’s never going to be a line based on purely scientific criteria – size of brain, say, or complexity of social life – above which we can agree it’s wrong, but below which it’s OK. What appears to be happening is rather that the circle of moral concern is getting wider and wider. Whether that means we’ll all end up in the future as vegetarians I kind of doubt, but the effort to minimise the suffering of those animals that we farm for meat is certainly going to get more and more attention. And certain creatures, of which whales are the most obvious example, are going to drop right off the list of what we consider suitable for hunting.

This isn’t just because it’s no longer necessary, or because those animals are endangered. It’s also because whales are awe-inspiring, and beautiful, and magnificent. There’s no point in pretending that we’re objective about it: we’re not. We’re humans, and we can’t help but bring all that to the argument. The suffering of a sewer rat is of less concern to us than the suffering of a pussy cat. That’s the way we are. It seems to me a mistake to argue, from the inescapable fact of human sympathies coming into play, that’s it’s therefore all a matter of culture, and thus we’re prevented from criticising the Japanese without incurring a charge of hypocrisy. We’re quite right to criticise them. At this stage in history we don’t need whales for food, and we don’t need their blubber or their oil. Plain and simple, it’s a barbaric custom.