Originally published April 27 2004
Whale hunting should be banned globally due to cruelty
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
A new report published by animal welfare societies says that all whale
hunting activities should be banned on grounds of cruelty. It's about
time somebody stood up for the obvious fact that whales are intelligent
beings who feel and experience pain when injured. To kill them, whalers
launch grenade-tipped spears that pierce the whales' bodies, then donate
internally. But the first blast often doesn't kill the poor whale, and
whale hunters have to finish the job -- minutes later -- with another
grenade or by firing rifles. It's a gruesome business, and the
activity simply has no place whatsoever in any civilized society. It's
bad enough that we've already polluted the whales' environment with
industrial pollution from river runoff and, especially, from military
sonar equipment that makes it extremely difficult for whales to
communicate or navigate. (That's why we see so many beached whales these
days.) Killing whales is inhumane, plain and simple. No human being
should engage in, or tolerate, such behavior by other humans. Whales are
peaceful, highly intelligent creatures, and it is time to enact a global
ban on the hunting and killing of these beings. Support Whale Watch.
The report, published by a global coalition of animal welfare
societies, contains "hard scientific dispassionate evidence that there
is no humane way to kill a whale at sea", according to a foreword by
naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough.
"The cruelty behind whaling has become obscured in recent years by
abstract arguments over population statistics," says Peter Davies of the
World Society for the Protection of Animals, which led the coalition.
The main method of killing whales is to use a grenade-tipped harpoon.
Instantaneous death cannot be guaranteed by modern hunting methods,
with whales taking an average of two minutes to die, says the report.
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