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Footage that can even turn Quentin's stomach
Last week, I told you about the annual dolphin hunt in Japan. It's now underway, which may explain why videos like this one are getting hundreds of thousands of hits on YouTube:
If you think you can handle it, take a look. Otherwise, trust me that it's some of the most disturbing footage you could ever see. Either way, please contact the Japanese Embassy and urge an end to the killing.
Andrew Sharpless is the CEO of Oceana, the world’s largest international nonprofit dedicated to ocean conservation. Visit www.oceana.org.
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bookerly Posted 12:10 pm
29 Sep 2006
As a non-animal welfare vegetarian, I am still delighted to see this kind of material shown (though, ummm, no, I didn't actually watch it).
In China, the animal welfare folks have a great local film that depicts butchering of animals and is also a stomach turner!!
Someone should go inside a slaughter house in the US and get some film!!!
YouTube may make the world go veggie! (grin)..
patrick
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caniscandida Posted 2:23 pm
29 Sep 2006
It is indeed horrifying, and stomach-turning. The two scenes that got me the most were, one where a guy with a big knife was slicing bit by bit into a dolphin's neck, and would step aside while the dolphin wriggled a bit, then would step in and make another cut, then would step back and wait, then would step in ... ; and, at the end, those very pretty little beautifully printed packages of cetacean-meat treats -- as though art makes everything OK.
I am sorry, I do not know if it is fair, but I have no wish to do anything constructive for the economy of Japan, so long as this sort of thing continues. I briefly used to drive a Honda Civic; I liked it a lot; I have heard good things about more recent models of Hondas and Toyotas. Fine. But however environmentally excellent Japanese vehicles may be, my answer to anyone seeking a recommendation for them is, Absolutely no comment, until cetacean slaughter by the Japanese is ceased once and for all.
Patrick is right (and not at all original) to recommend that somebody shoot similar footage inside of US factory-farm slaughter houses. We need transparency in the American meat industry. "Slaughterhouses should have glass walls," said Michael Pollan (I think). The reason we do not have such transparency is because the owners know -- they know! -- that once American consumers see what horrors are involved in how their food is got to them, many of them will lose their appetite.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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bookerly Posted 5:21 pm
29 Sep 2006
Dear CanisCandida,
There is a problem with your criticizing all of Japan over this issue. All of Japan is not involved. You might as well refuse to eat any food in America until Americans stop killing animals in terrible ways.
Blame the people involved, not the whole nation (or should you and I be blamed for everything George Bush does?).
pace,
patrick
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caniscandida Posted 4:36 am
30 Sep 2006
you are right to urge me not to "criticize all of Japan" on account of the dolphin slaughter. Only, I do not think I was doing that. If I gave that impression, it is because I wrote hastily and sloppily.
I certainly do not blame all the people of Japan for Japanese whaling, or for the dolphin slaughter, just as I do not blame all the people of India and China for the poaching of the last remaining Bengal tigers and for the commerce in tiger body parts, nor do I blame all the people of China for the commerce in the fur of dogs and cats, nor do I blame all the people of Canada for the slaughter of harp seals, nor do I blame all the people of the United States for legally tolerating factory farms and puppy mills. Nevertheless, the people of these countries should be put on notice that their laws permit the abuse of animals, and that some of their fellow-citizens are directly responsible for that abuse.
Actually, I rather doubt that boycotts carried out by individuals are very effective. What I wrote earlier, at a moment of great outrage, looks mighty quixotic. Andrew's suggestion, to contact the Japanese embassy, strikes me as much more promising.
Now, on blaming you and me for what George W. Bush does, I am afraid I can very well understand foreigners for doing just that, especially after the 2004 election, even if their blame is in our two cases misdirected.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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Jason D Scorse Posted 4:14 pm
30 Sep 2006
J.S.
Assistant Professor,
Monterey Institute of International Studies
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Jason D Scorse Posted 4:15 pm
30 Sep 2006
J.S.
Assistant Professor,
Monterey Institute of International Studies
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davidintokyo Posted 8:10 pm
30 Sep 2006
As Jason says though, there is plenty more in the world to be concerned about as well. There's some footage here:
http://www.savethesheep.com/
(I personally find this more disturbing, so look out)
On the other hand, there is this:
http://www.icrwhale.org/eng/GPAS3.mpg
I can still think about dinner after watching that. The Greenpeace stunt-crew were lucky that hunting methods capable of bringing about instantaneous death exist, or otherwise they may have found themselves in serious trouble, after they got that line caught on their inflatable.
Putting things into perspective, people in Japan kill around 20,000 cetaceans each year. How many sheep and cows are killed? I don't know if anyone has an accurate count, but I do know which issue is of far far more concern to me.
Sure, as this seems to be an animal welfare site I'll state my view that humans should aim to kill animals as swiftly as possible (with the ICR video above being a model example), but there are certainly areas for improvement.
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atreyger Posted 8:30 am
01 Oct 2006
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caniscandida Posted 7:25 pm
01 Oct 2006
DavidinTokyo wrote:
<<
Putting things into perspective, people in Japan kill around 20,000 cetaceans each year. How many sheep and cows are killed? I don't know if anyone has an accurate count, but I do know which issue is of far far more concern to me.
>>
DiT's very very deep concerns are apparently so deeply engraved that it really does not matter what Jason or Andrew or anyone else says.
But with respect to real absolute numbers of animals actually killed by human beings, killed for one reason or another, DiT is undeniably right to remind us that the number of domestic animals that are killed for human consumption is higher by several orders than the number of cetaceans. He/She mentions sheep and cows; he/she might also have mentioned pigs; and, if we may allow ourselves to be so big-minded as to move outside Class Mammalia, he/she might have mentioned chickens and ducks and other poultry -- who you might think would be on his/her mind, being much in the news in the past year in connexion with avian flu in East Asia, and who are by far the most numerous animal victims.
But the accounting of relative numbers of victims who die by human hands is not at all sufficient to excuse the murder of whales and dolphins. (Oops, there's that word again.)
DavidinTokyo goes on:
<<
Sure, as this seems to be an animal welfare site I'll state my view that humans should aim to kill animals as swiftly as possible
>>
Neither Grist.org nor her little sister Gristmill is accurately characterized as "an animal welfare site." Of course, many of us who are concerned with animal welfare are also interested in all kinds of other, not related environmental things. We read here lots of interesting stuff, and sometimes we write stuff too, some of which deals with the consideration of animals' interests. But what we write is entirely the responsibility of us, the individual writers, not of Grist or Gristmill.
To say nothing of our aestheticians.
To be sure, Grist and Gristmill are to be praised for allowing such eloquent spokespersons for animal welfare as Andrew Sharpless and Jason Scorse to post what they like. They have allowed this excellent, open-minded forum, and we should all be grateful.
On the speed with which an animal is killed, and the length of time in which an animal being killed suffers: This is an important issue. And frankly I am very surprised that DavidinTokyo brought it up. I would never have expected it of him/her.
Recently, DiT tried to entangle poor Jason in a hasty, unhappy expression of his, which suggested that there is both a "moral" and an "immoral" way to kill any animal. Jason was fortunately able to disentangle himself.
But now that DavidinTokyo is on record as acknowledging that the speed with which certain animals, being fatally wounded by hunters or slaughterers, actually die, somehow matters, I would like to ask: How does it matter? Why does it matter? Does it matter that we are talking about a dolphin, and not about a pig, or a seal, or a chicken? If so, why should the suffering and death of a cetacean matter more than that of an artiodactyl or a pinniped carnivore or a galliform bird?
A question of a different sort: Given that you, dear DavidinTokyo, are on record as regretting the long, drawn-out, clearly painful deaths of the dolphins being slaughtered, are you prepared to go the next step and say that no killing of dolphins is ethically permissible, unless it be quick, and painless, and as free of fright and stress as possible?
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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