In Norway my relatives eat Whale. In Australia my relatives eat Cow. If we want to get sacred about animals we should be consistent.

A good article that attempts to bring some balance to an overly emotional topic

Cows are not facing extinction. We are...by our own stupidity and thought that if our ancestors raped and pillaged for years (Vikings) it must be "natural" just like "natural" arsenic.

Man has a bad track record of dishonesty and abusing treaties, not to mention Mother and Father Nature. How do you keep them honest.

Should we start shooting koala bears or eating echidna when their numbers pick up? How about platypus stew...as long as they don't spike me with their hind legs. I am sure they are very tasty. We could strangle them to death or use rifle-propelled grenades for the koalas high up in trees..or make it a slow death so we don't bruise the meat. We do the same to fish of all sizes...we shouldn't be squeamish as we are carnivores and even we Anglo's had ancestors who ate whales, mammoths and megalofauna for years.

Now let's go and see what species is in the freezer for tea tonight....no not Dugong burgers again.

Cows are not facing extinction because producers have a vested interest in maintaing numbers.

Do you no who started the IWC. Thats right, the Whaling industry. To protect the industry by ensuring that whale populations remain viable. Of course since then the IWC has been hijacked by other parties.

The Japanese should be forced to donate the catched whales to an African country to relieve hunger.

Then lets see how much enthusiasm is left to continue scientific whaling

A thought about cultural practices:

"Culture" does not stand still in time. Look back and see some bad old habits already left behind by many cultures: cannibalism, slavery, witch-burning, the chatteldom of women.

One day I hope that all peoples of the world will be able to feel well-fed without killing other animals. Meanwhile, let's kill as kindly as possible and without further unbalancing ecological systems.

A decent human future depends on much reducing the human footprint and rehabilitating the ecosystems already unbalanced and impoverished.

If the more powerful human beings don't care about the long term outcomes of their actions, all our descendants will pay the price - not only in lost environmental services and safety, but in internecine human conflict. It has already started. Just look around the world.

It's a pity about human greed. The earth was once a very beautiful place.

Odysseus,
The Greeks were well-known for raping and pillaging, too.

As for "traditional" whaling I have no problem with it as long as it is regulated, and humane, and most importantly, in the case of "primitive" hunters, utilises primitive methods. Dugong hunters in Torres Strait use fast boats and rifles, hence the huge kill in recent years.

The Japanese have no history of eating whale meat, in fact they only started after World War II when that meat was cheap and available. Nordic peoples have a long history of eating whale meat, their land was and remains poor so they lived off the sea.

Aside from the rather inhumane methods used to kill whales, one worry I'd have is species identification. Who is to know what species are really taken? one the whales are slaughtered and chopped up and in the shops, who would know that it wasn't a rare Blue Whale? Would commercial Japanese whalers really care? At least Norwegian whalers target specific species in specific numbers and don't sell the meat.