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Japan to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Japan to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission

#201

Post by adrianN »

wolco wrote: post #141
kadendogthing wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>that would be an over reaction that will harm more than it helps. Explain.

Legal avenues for fishing are gone. Illegal fishing takes over with no controls. More deaths more over fishing. Another scenerio. Farming fishing increases causing increase population which[p is then dumped into the clean water supply. What no one is mentioning is the amount of radioactive waste Japan is pumping into the ovean still. This is bigger problem but one being ignored.

I'm pretty sure there would be a lot less fishing if it was illegal. You would only be able to sell your fish on black markets at high markups. That would price out many customers.

Re: Japan to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission

#202

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

tomp wrote: post #178
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surely if killing animals is wrong, so is exploiting them for eggs and milk? Prefacing an argument with "surely" doesn't make it a stronger argument. I don't see why it follows at all that raising animals for eggs or milk could not be done humanely.

Well, the argument agains killing animals seems to be "you wouldn't kill humans" (I don't consider "animals suffer" a valid argument, because there are viable killing methods that don't cause suffering), so then you can use the same argument "you wouldn't enslave humans" with any kind of farm-raising. Like, the only possibly moral alternative would be foraging - picking unfertilized eggs of wild birds - but I don't t…

> Well, the argument agains killing animals seems to be "you wouldn't kill humans"

That's not my argument, so I'll try to explain my personal reasoning. To me, the main real reason we have for not killing or hurting other creatures is that we believe they have some level of emotional life, and are capable of things like happiness, love (at least in some form), sadness, fear, and suffering beyond just physical pain. We love our dogs, cats, etc. because we believe at some level they are capable of loving us back (perhaps a stretch for cats I know).

Thus, for me personally I draw the line at mammals because I believe they possess all of these qualities. I will eat poultry, fish and shellfish because I don't believe they have the same capacity of "emotional sentience" as humans, though I'm fully open to the idea that my ideas about poultry are wrong.

Thus, while I "wouldn't enslave humans" I also believe it's possible to keep hens and cows for eggs and dairy in a manner where the animal does not suffer, and I don't see this as any kind of "enslavement".

Re: Japan to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission

#203

Post by hjek »

cataphract wrote: post #186
hjek wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if everybody eats plants we would also need a huge amount of water/field sizes to feed everybody. Keeping non-human animals for the purpose of eating their flesh requires even huger amounts of water/field sizes; so much in fact that half of the world's crops are fed to non-human animals[0]. [0]: https://www.treehugger.com/green-food/half-of-world-crop-is-...

Those numbers are way off, even if industrial animal husbandry is highly inefficient. You may want to read Meat: a benign extravagance by Simon Fairlie: https://www.amazon.com/Meat-Benign-Extravagance-Simon-Fairli...

Here's some numbers from a peer-reviewed analysis from 2018[0]:

> The new analysis shows that while meat and dairy provide just 18% of calories and 37% of protein, it uses the vast majority – 83% – of farmland and produces 60% of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions.

I know I was responding to a specific comment about land usage, but I probably wouldn't read that book as I also believe that we should prevent unnecessary pain and suffering, e.g. even if we hypothetically found out that the smoke from the ovens in concentration camps didn't contribute significantly to air pollution, they still wouldn't be a good idea, so of course I object to a book that describes ongoing mass killings as "benign".

But if you have the specific numbers from the book handy, I'd still like to give them a look.

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...

Re: Japan to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission

#204

Post by nec4b »

jamil7 wrote: post #145
merb wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

some plants would kill the planet as well. let's take almonds for example, they need a huge amount of water. and still more and more products will include them. if everybody eats plants we would also need a huge amount of water/field sizes to feed everybody. guess the best thing is a healthy mix of everything.

Animals need even more water and space, both for themselves and for the huge amount of plant crops we grow to feed them. Which one do you think is more effecient to eat?

How much grass can a human eat? There are huge swathes of land where nothing but grass grows. Animal can graze it and people can eat animals.

Re: Japan to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission

#205

Post by lb1lf »

y4mi wrote: post #97
mr_overalls wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few hundred years ago, men in many countries were allowed to beat their wives and children with few restrictions. Need I also mention that slavery and child labor were legal? Historical legacy is absolutely no rationale for continuing to cause needless suffering in intelligent beings.

Well , by that logic any and all meat has to be banned. That is unachievable at the moment. It's saddening, that people willingly participate in extinction of a species however... that is what whaling has become after all.

Extinction is a bit too strong of a word here - the combined minke whale population (AFAIK, minkes in the northern and southern hemisphere are considered separate species) is numbered in the hundreds of thousands; Japan kills a few hundred a year, last year Norway caught 342.

Full disclosure - Norwegian, living in an area where whaling has been performed for hundreds of years, currently have about 12-15 pounds of whale meat in the freezer.

Re: Japan to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission

#206

Post by alangpierce »

platz wrote: post #60
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that a serious question? As one small example, the 500 million or so vegetarians in India seem to do just fine.

I thought there were a few required proteins that were very hard to supply in the body without an animal source

Soylent is vegan and nutritionally complete, so there are definitely cheap-to-produce ways to make it work.

Re: Japan to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission

#207

Post by myrandomcomment »

There is zero reason for whaling in Japan beyond the governments desire to protect a dying industry and a political need to look strong to conservative / right wing / nationalist voters. I have spent a considerable amount of time in Japan (collectively nearly 3 years) and visit once a month for work. None of my Japanese friends or colleagues will eat whale. They find the whole thing silly and feel the industry should just end. Their collective ages are between 30 to 70 and they represent a good cross section of backgrounds. This is a nitch right wing issue.

Re: Japan to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission

#208

Post by praneshp »

hjek wrote: post #164
benchaney wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The farmer owns farmland that could be used but isn’t.

Of course it is problematic that land owners are actually rewarded for their wealth. But at least it's difficult to create new would-be farmland. However if the would-be fisherman owns a fishing boat that could be used but isn't, then perhaps a lot of would-be fishing boats would suddenly be constructed so would-be fishers would be paid for their would-be fish catching.

> Of course it is problematic that land owners are actually rewarded for their wealth

No, they are rewarded for playing along with whatever scheme's currently running. Stop trying to demonize them.

Re: Japan to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission

#209

Post by lb1lf »

TomMarius wrote: post #87
coldtea wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "tradition" argument is interesting: We'll keep on doing this, because we've been doing it for a while, so let's not consider whether it's appropriate. No, it's more like: "We do this for a long time, and we consider this part of who we are, and we like it, and want to keep doing it. We're not idiots to just do it because we did it in the past, and in fact, we have opted to drop tons of things that we did in th…

So why even argue that? Why not just say "I like whale meat"? I hate this "it's a tradition" bullshit. Just say it, stop hiding behind traditions.

In my experience, the tradition argument doesn’t carry too much weight in Norway - local sentiment (I live within spitting distance of three whaling vessels’ home port) is more that whale meat is tasty (and, historically, much more accessible than other meats, as dairy farming is somewhat of an extreme sport on these small islands we call home) and also, whaling is more profitable than most other forms of marine harvesting, never (to the best of my knowledge) having received subsidies &c - it is commercially viable.

Re: Japan to withdraw from the International Whaling Commission

#210

Post by jounker »

ngngngng wrote: post #183
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I think both of those points are very debatable (just search YouTube for factory farming videos if you really think livestock conditions are better), they still miss the point. After all, both of your points could just as easily apply to dogs, cats, horses, whales, chimpanzees and heck, even humans. My main argument is that there is really no morally consistent way to think that eating dogs, cats, horses or wha…

I think you are correct, but agreeing with you on the lack of moral consistency does not drive me to cut meat out of my diet. I've never tried dog, but I certainly would. I keep dogs as pets and I would never eat my own dogs. They have emotional value to me, by my own design, as that's the purpose I've given them in my life. There are many reasons to why we wouldn't eat certain animals. Cats hunt rodents, dogs are pr…

It’s strictly cultural. Every grocery store in Switzerland sells horse cold-cuts.
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