This is a copy and paste written by Denise Watt, because she wins the internet every time. D, I could not have said it better myself. STOP SIGNING PETITIONS for causes that aim to destroy traditional and sustainable hunting practices!!!!!! Okay, so I’ve seen the story going around in various forms for a few years, and I know that people who post it mean well, but it is simply riddled with misinformation, so I felt a need to point out a few glaring problems with it, because it poses a threat to the way of life of the indigenous population of the Faroe Islands. The story goes like this: Stop the hunt of endangered dolphins in the Faroe Islands! These people savagely kill innocent sea life once a year in a traditional hunt. They use barbaric practices to kill the animals, and they do it just for fun! Sign this petition now, help save the dolphins! Lie#1: They are hunting a species of endangered dolphin: No. While many articles do get it right, they are in fact hunting pilot whales. These whales have a healthy size population, and this local hunt, which kills about 700 a year, does not pose a risk to their numbers. Lie# 2: This barbaric practice is done just for sport: No. This traditional hunt that includes inhabitants of all 18 of the Faroe Islands feeds the population for the winter. The meat and blubber are distributed to the entire population, feeding young and old, rich and poor alike. Lie#3: The hunt is no longer necessary because the people of the islands now have an economy that is supported by commercial fishing and international trade: Okay, this one blows my mind. The logic being applied here is this: ban this sustainable hunt that feeds an entire local population in order to make them fully dependant on commercial fishing, a practice that has rapidly degraded the health of our oceans in the span of a few decades. Support an industry that uses drag nets, huge amounts of petroleum, and is devastating to the environment . BAN a hunt that is sustainable, rooted in a tradition that has important cultural implications for the people there, and which allows them to keep a certain amount of autonomy within a global market run on corporate interest, no doubt hungry to swallow them whole. Way to save the whales, guys. Lie#4: But it’s so cruel!: Okay, looking at the blood red sea and whale carcases is a tough one to take in, I get it. But people need to know something: that sanitized meat you get at the grocery store, the one wrapped in saran wrap on that styrofoam plate that will never biodegrade – that used to be alive. And when it died, it bled. Everywhere. It also suffered and cried out in pain and fear. You just didn’t see it, and you never will. Because unlike those pilot whales who lived out their lives in the wide open sea, before being caught and slaughtered on the beach, the animals we eat never see the light of day. They are born and grow up in cages, injected with hormones and antibiotics and fed a diet of grains and other animal parts that their bodies are not equipped to properly digest, bred only for profit, making a handful of people very rich off of an industry that is wasteful, polluting and excessively cruel. Maybe everyone who eats meat should have the experience at least once of hunting or slaughtering their own meal. I think when you come that close to what you eat and how it has to die for you to eat it, you discover a greater reverence for life. Instead of harassing a rural island population of some 50,000 inhabitants, why don’t we start putting pressure on our own government and industries to stop the cruel treatment of the animals that we eat every single day? Want to help out animals in real time? Say no to North American slaughter houses and their inhumane practices. Buy free range, organic meats. Not enough for you? Try going vegetarian. Send letters of protest to OUR government, not to someone else’s. I know Jesus quotes don’t have much currency these days, but he said a couple of rad things, one of those being “you hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.“ Let’s get on that, shall we? Say NO to factory farms! Support Indigenous hunters!
Posted on: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 00:37:31 +0000
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