The International Whaling Commission is meeting this week in Agadir, Morocco, to discuss a possible lifting of the moratorium on commercial whaling, which entered into force in 1986. Few subjects evoke as much emotion and bitterness as whaling, so we can expect this week to see some fierce debates and probably quite a lot of discord, even among supposed allies.
I have always been a staunch defender of animal welfare, both before and during my career as an elected politician. I have no enthusiasm for whaling and I consider it to be of limited scientific value (science being the guise under which Japan has avoided the moratorium). Like many people, I am distressed by TV pictures of highly intelligent sentient mammals being harpooned and hauled onto ships. I certainly don’t find it an edifying spectacle. I would prefer for IWC member states to vote to maintain a moratorium on commercial whaling.
However, I am rarely an absolutist on any particular policy. And in the case of whaling, I think there is a case to make that it is fundamentally a matter for sovereign states to decide. In particular I advocate this view because in the case of the main pro-whaling nations – Japan, Denmark, Norway and Iceland – whaling has been part of their culture, heritage and identity for centuries.
It’s something we can’t really understand if we haven’t been part of that culture ourselves. The Conservative approach has always tended towards ‘live and let live’ rather than seeking to impose our own values and outlook on others. We should also bear in mind that the aforementioned pro-whaling nations are stable and successful democracies, whose voters would presumably force their governments to act if they felt sufficiently strongly opposed to whaling. I take some comfort from the fact that most young Japanese apparently now find eating whale meat distasteful.
At the moment, three countries catch whales. Norway never agreed to be bound by the moratorium; Japan uses the get-out clause of ‘scientific’ whaling, even though much of the whale meat its vessels catch ends up being consumed; and Iceland, having initially accepted to be bound by the ban, has since resumed whaling – no doubt a complicating factor in future negotiations to join the European Union.
Denmark and Sweden are the only EU member states to support a lifting of the moratorium. The European Union has been trying, and has failed, to agree a common position ahead of the Agadir meeting. However, the EU is not a member of the IWC. Therefore, EU member states will either vote individually or will vote to abstain as a negotiated compromise to accommodate the position of Denmark and Sweden.
However, the EU has, in the past, shown itself able to find common ground on such issues. Last year the EU banned the import of Canadian seal products over the delicate issue of seal clubbing, a practice largely confined to Inuit communities that depend on it for their livelihoods. The EU justified the ban by saying seal clubbing was inhumane, although – and perhaps we should remember this in the context of the whaling debate – it does not seem to have saved the life of a single seal pup.
Last week in the European Parliament session in Strasbourg I found myself speaking on behalf of the ECR Group on whaling. I explained in my speech that I was opposed to whaling but that states have a sovereign right to hunt whales for food, particularly if they have done so for centuries and the species of whale being hunted is not endangered.
If we are to ban whaling in the EU on animal welfare grounds we should surely also ban bullfighting and fox hunting across the EU. The fact that we allow these activities to continue, albeit subject to tight regulation at EU member state level, suggests to me that we ought to allow countries with an unbroken history of whaling to continue to catch whales commercially under certain tightly regulated conditions.
There is also the issue of sustainability to consider. The successful and evocative campaigns launched by Greenpeace and other environmental organisations deliberately made little reference to the difference in the numbers of various species of whales because this would have distracted attention from their argument of a total ban. But scientists concur that certain species of whales are abundant in our oceans, and could be caught sustainably if the catch was monitored, regulated and limited appropriately.
Sustainable whaling would appear to be viable in particular if the creatures are not threatened with extinction as is the case for the minke and sperm whales – the former being the sole species the Japanese hunt for so-called ‘scientific’ purposes, although as mentioned most of the slaughtered whales end up on the menu in up-market Japanese restaurants. On the other hand, the magnificent blue whale is an endangered species which, in my view, would fall under the CITES convention if there were no IWC moratorium, and therefore deserves a very special level of protection. The other issue to be discussed in Agadir is whether to preserve the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, a vast expanse of sea adjacent to Antarctica where all whaling has been banned as part of a settlement.
In my speech last week I also argued that the whaling industry must be able to show that it is progressively developing more humane methods of killing whales, particularly in terms of speed and painlessness, and that any resumption of commercial whaling must be subject to rigorous tests in this regard. We have insisted on more humane methods of rearing and slaughter for farm animals and we should do the same for all animals killed for a commercial purpose or otherwise. Having said that, personally I think that killing these animals is only really justified for food – the scientific reasons seem to be more to do with honing the skills of Japanese whalers in the hope that the moratorium will be eventually lifted.
Mike Nattrass, a UKIP MEP, made in my view an excessively emotive and absurd speech during last week’s otherwise reasoned debate in which he equated whaling to ‘murder’, called the Japanese ‘inhumane’ and said that the UK would ‘vote to leave the EU in uncontrollable anger’ if the EU was to force the UK to abstain, rather than vote against, the lifting of the moratorium. For the record, the UK cannot be forced to do anything – this is a matter for member states to decide in Council by negotiation. It struck me as slightly ironic that a sovereignist UKIP MEP should seek to undermine the rights of sovereign countries like Japan or Norway to pursue their own interests.
It’s just that kind of emotional language that we need to avoid as we debate the future of whaling, because it merely strengthens the determination of those who wish to see it continue. I will repeat: I am no personal fan of whaling and I would rather it did not happen. But I also recognize that there are other factors to be considered, and they should be considered fully, carefully and without emotion. The risk of provoking a schism in the IWC is that some countries break away completely and all efforts by the UK and the EU to maintain a reasonable international coalition in favour of restricting whaling as much as possible will come to nothing.
As I post this, news is leaking out from Agadir. A compromise deal appears to be on the table whereby there would be a return to a strictly regulated regime of commercial whaling for a period of ten years (South Korea is also apparently interested in a resumption of whaling), so those of us interested in this conservation issue will be eagerly watching the outcome of negotiations.