Faroe Island Whale Massacre

JUST ONE WORD "SHOCKING" I LOVE NATURE-WANTED TO VISIT THE FAROE ISLANDS BUT WILL NOT AFTER SEEING THE PICS OF THE SLAUGHTER OF THOSE WONDERFUL CREATURES. NO NEED FOR THAT CRUELTY!

The response below, when i protested directly to the Denmark official web site.

Dear Sir

The Danish Foreign Ministry have received your letter where you express your feelings caused by some pictures circulating on the internet depicting selected scenes from the catching of pilot whales in the Faroe Islands.

We take note of the fact that a number of people find the above mentioned pictures disturbing. However, before passing any judgment upon whaling in general or the Faroese pilot whale drive fishery in particular one will need to supplement a possibly negative aesthetic first hand impression with considerations of a number of issues such as:

· General principles regarding use of wildlife;

· Biodiversity: the effects of the catch upon the relevant whale stock;

· Principles regarding the sustainable use of ocean resources, including interdependence between marine mammals and fish stocks;

· Animal welfare issues, including comparisons of a whale hunt with other hunts of large mammals in the wild, with the treatment of farmed animals throughout their life cycle, and of animals which are regarded as a nuisance; one might even consider certain kinds of non-food-related violent treatment of large mammals, found in some cultures.

· Ethics of food production in general. Does a meal of pilot whale meat represent more or less cumulated man-made animal pain than dishes normally eaten in one’s own country?

· Ecological questions, notably the ecological footprint of different modes of meat production, including the choice between local and imported food.

· Geographic and nutritional factors, availability of alternative food sources, notably in islands and remote coastal areas, not least in arctic or sub-arctic parts of the world.

· Cultural diversity, and tolerance/intolerance towards people with different food preferences and/or different attitudes towards different animals;

The Faroe Islands have autonomy within the Kingdom of Denmark. The islands are not included in Denmark’s membership of the European Union. Affairs regarding industry, agriculture, the environment, fishing and whaling, are subject to Faroese autonomy.

If you want to address the Faroese authorities regarding pilot whaling, the e-mail address of the Foreign Department of the Faroese Government is mfa@mfa.fo; The e-mail address of the Faroese department of Fisheries and Maritime Affairs is fisk@fisk.fo;

If you, before forming your own finite opinion of the subject, or before addressing the relevant authorities, should be interested in acquiring some factual knowledge about whaling in the Faroe Islands, you may turn to the homepage on whaling of the Faroese authorities: www.whaling.fo;

Kind regards,

THE EDITORS OF DENMARK.DK
EDITORS@DENMARK.DK

MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF DENMARK
ASIATISK PLADS 2 / DK-1448 KØBENHAVN K

WWW.DENMARK.DK - THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE OF DENMARK

You bleeding-heart fools just need to shut up. If it's that big a problem, something would have been done by now. You say they are cruel and inhuman, I say YOU are since you put the lives of a few whales above human survival and the survival of a centuries old tradition. If you still have a problem with it, just sit back and watch. They're killing themselves off slowly by eating things not meant for human consumption. Stop meddling in other people's affairs and go back to your meaningless lives.

jesus christ! here it goes again. if you eat animals then dont complaint because whales live free and are not endangered. altough the twist of irony with mercury in the meat is a result of idustrial countries like japan and usa who fill the oceans with toxic waste. so focus on them (its more like they who kill all life in the ocean) and not a small population of people in the north atlantic. and note that all hunting societies have more or not to say the greatest respect and understanding abouth wildlife. so all you hippies and nogood for nothing city people just go hang yourselves and make the world a better place!!!

I live in the Faroe Islands, and have done so all my life.

It's incredible to read all this information posted by "whale lovers". You would think that these animal rights activists had done some reasearch on the matter, to ensure some validity in the information they post.

First of all, nowhere near 2.000 whales are killles each year. That number is not even close, as the real number is at its highest perhaps 1000. That is without considering the many years where absolutely no whales are killed, or not even 100. Perhaps we had one good year, about 20 or 30 years ago, where 2000 whales were killed, but that centainly doesn't get the everage up to 2.000. Wikipedia put's the number of whales killed annually in the Faroes to 950. Less than half as much as posted on this website.

You read these websites which post information about whale killings in the Faroe Islands, and all you read about is how barberic and cruel it is. What i don't understand is exactly what makes it barberic and cruel. Animals are killed every day all around the world, in much more horrific ways. The only difference being that you don't see those animals be killed, and there's not as much blood perhaps. I guess the definition of the word "barberic" on this website means the killing of an animal you like, nomatter how it's killed. Just as long as it dies and you can see pictures of it being killed, then it's barberic.

One should absolutely not respect animal life in the oceans above all other animal life. That is very biased and only idolizes one certain species above all other. I can not imagine anything more nonsensicial and farther from the truth than that.  All animal life should be respected equally nomatter if it's a whale or a maggot. Just because some people like to look at the whale, doesn't mean it should have a better right to live than other animals. That would throw everything out of order, and thus be a much bigger threath to all animal life.

If you care so much about wild-life, then go save the many hundreds of insect species that go extinct every year in the rainforest. Oh wait, i forgot, those insects are not as beatiful to watch as the whale... Too bad for the insects.

Since when has the fishing industry in the Faroes collapsed?? I have centainly not been witness to it, eventhough i live here. Just not true! It has not collapsed.

Whale killings in the Faroes date much farther back than the 16 hundreds, as stated on this website. The real and true thing to write would be the 10'th century.

I will not dwelve into the toxisity of the whale meat or blubber, simply because i do not want post incorrect information, just like this website. I can however say, that i have never known or heard of a single person who has gotten sick of it. This is a very small country, where most people know most people, and i just don't know of any of these cases.

I urge people not to take the information on this website as being true. Articles like these are written by people who have clearly not done any research whatsoever, and most of it is extremely biased and blown way out of proportions.

For more correct information about whale killings in the Faroe Islands, please visit this un-biased wikipedia webpage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_the_Faroe_Islands

It is a terrible show of ignorance, gratefulness for life, and brotherhood with our fellow being. How can they permit (and I say permit because these ignorant people need to be stopped) such a massacre, can these people not understand the preciousness of the animals??

You crazy dannish people. I wish you be killed like these Dolphins. That's all. Fuck you.

I'm basically against killing any animal for food, it's not nessary with knowlegde we have learned.  Yes I do eat it because my parents got me addicted to it. Very hard addiction to break. I have gone 100% raw vegan for 9 months at a time, 4 times. These islanders don't need to do this now. 

Yes in survival situations in cold climates one would have to eat meat, but in most the civalized world people can get there calories elsewhere cheaply. Why kill the whales and dolphine, aren't the fish enough. These people are only killing for the enjoyment of tradition and using the excuse they eat every gram. Can't that be every gram of fish instead, that is also an old tradition. Most the rest of the world were capable to stop eating this meat, why are these people incapable of stopping it?

My biggest concern here is how they kill these mammals. The average time to get them to die is one minute but that could be much more. That's a lot pain and suffering. Are these people so cheap they can't afford bullets or shotgun shells. Wouldn't one shot to the brain be more merciful???? Just use a big enough gun. Or is it also a tradition to cause pain and suffering

I don't care if it is a 400 year old tradition. It's still barbaric.

It's some kind of justice that the meat will slowly poison them.