Filed for The Guardian, 25 June 1992
“If whales could scream,” wrote Dr Harvey Lillie, “the industry would stop for nobody would be able to stand it.” He was writing in 1947 after spending months aboard a boat watching it fire exploding harpoons into whales.
In the screamless silence, we have to make do with something called the Humane Killing Working Group. This bizarrely named international body of experts is meeting in Glasgow today (Friday) to consider what to say to the 37-nation International Whaling Commission which is gathering in the city next week to decide whether or not to lift the six-year moratorium on commercial whaling.
Since the working group is open to representatives of all the major whaling nations (Japan, Norway, Iceland and Denmark) as well as those opposed to whaling (Britain, America, Australia and New Zealand), it is unlikely to come to any firm conclusions. The anti-whaling nations believe that there is no humane way of killing whales, while the whaling countries point out that their techniques are more humane than they used to be.
The working group will be considering the advice of a seven-nation workshop which met in Glasgow earlier this week. The workshop’s report - obtained by The Guardian yesterday - urges improvements in harpoon technology and firing aimed at reducing the time it takes for whales to die. It also calls for further investigations into current whale killing, including post-mortems and tissue samples.
Although the report stops short of condemning whaling as inhumane, that may not stop some countries from using it to support their arguments against whaling next week. The fact that humane killing - defined as “causing death without pain, stress or distress perceptible to the animal” - is coming centre stage in the whale debate is due mainly to the efforts of the British government.
It was the British that suggested reassembling the workshop to review progress since humane killing was last fully discussed in 1980. When the UK Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, John Gummer, makes his opening speech on Monday, he is likely to reiterate his strongly-held belief that whales cannot be killed humanely.
His stance reflects the political heat that is always generated by animal cruelty issues in Britain - skilfully stoked in recent weeks by full-page newspaper advertisements from animal welfare groups. But it is also a pragmatic tactical ploy to maximise the chances of preventing the International Whaling Commission from allowing thousands of minke whales to be killed.
Japan, Norway and Iceland are going to argue that populations of this small 30-foot whale are sufficient to permit sustainable killing. There are reckoned to be about 68,000 minke in the north east Atlantic where Norway wants to begin commercial hunting. It has already announced that it plans to kill 400 over the next three years for “scientific research”.
The whaling countries have accused Britain of hypocrisy over humane killing, claiming that there is essentially no difference between killing whales and cattle. Mr Gummer dealt with the point famously in 1988 by pointing out that he would not permit “a farmer to throw a harpoon at a cow and allow it to run through five fields before it was killed.”
Unfortunately the minister is still vulnerable to another accusation which has been levelled by the Norwegians. A pro-whaling lobby group called High North Alliance has forcefully contrasted his concern about cruelty to whales with his recent support for the continuation of fox hunting.
The problem for whalers is that they cannot seriously argue that their methods are humane. Scientific research assembled by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals shows that harpooned whales typically take five or ten minutes to die. In extreme cases, the killing can last as long as an hour.
Whalers can argue that the modern penthrite harpoon, named after the explosive it uses, is less cruel than earlier weapons because it causes only localised damage. It was introduced in the early 1980s to kill small whales which previous exploding harpoons would have blown apart. But it can still cause prolonged suffering.
Some research suggests that as many as 90% pass straight through the whale and out the other side. One female minke whale in 1986 took 30 minutes to die after she had been pierced by a penthrite. She was hit again by a non-explosive harpoon and eventually killed using eight bullets.
The Japanese are known to haul in whales hit but not killed by harpoons in order to electrocute them by the side of their boats. Despite the Humane Killing Working Group’s view that electrocution could cause “extreme pain” due to rigid extensions of the muscles, whales can take four or five minutes to be killed in this way.
“These methods are used out of sight and are hence out of mind,” said Greenpeace’s whale campaigner, Andy Ottaway. “If the same methods were used to kill animals on land, they would be banned outright