Let Them Eat Whale If They Want to

Let Them Eat Whale If They Want to

(from "Daily Telegram", 27/Jun/1996)

Charles Clover

I ate whale in Norway's high north the other day, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world. Minke whale has a dark meat with a similar consistency to liver and a taste reminiscent of beef. On this occasion it was sauteed deliciously in the pan and its juices enhanced with a few pimentos, bacon and cream. But essentially this was Viking fare, eaten for countless generations in a land where mountains rise out of the mist, the land is poor, and the sea teems with whales, seals and cod.

It is surprising that the sea-going, fox-hunting British should suddenly decide to be so intolerant of the Norwegians' traditional urge to eat whale. While rebuking the tabloids for being beastly to the Germans this week, we should also examine the humbug spouted by the broadsheets, and even ministers of state, about our older allies in Norway.

Norway's decision this year to award its coastal fishermen a quota of 425 minke whales in the summer months - on the basis of stock estimates six times higher than at the time a global moratorium on whaling was declared in the Eighties - has prompted some questionable rhetoric from Tony Baldry, the Fisheries Minister, whose capacity for getting it wrong is beginning to rival that of the reviled Baldrie in television's Blackadder.

In a statement to the meeting of the International Whaling Commission in Aberdeen this week, he chose to invent more reasons for Britain's opposition to whaling, beyond the previously stated concerns about the inadequacy of controls on commercial whaling and distaste at certain killing methods, such as the electric lance.

Mr Baldry opined: "There are wider reasons for opposing commercial whaling. It meets no pressing nutritional, economic or social needs, and it is strongly opposed by the vast majority of our citizens." Just because something could be exploited on a sustainable basis, didn't mean it had to be exploited. It was, he said, Britain's wish that whales should henceforth be exploited in "non-lethal" ways, i.e., tourism.

Come now, Baldrie. This is taking vote-hunting a shade too far. There are principles to be upheld, common to Norway and Britain - regardless of what an urban electorate which has lost touch with the land as well as the sea might choose to think. What pressing nutritional, economic or social need does fox-hunting serve, pray? The vast majority in Britain - the 80 per cent who live in towns - oppose it; and yet the elders of the Conservative Party have until now wisely sought to protect it because it glues together the fabric of life in rural communities.

What would happen if we were to extend Mr Baldry's logic that we should exploit whales in "non-lethal ways" to grouse, salmon or stags? What if we started telling Nelson Mandela's South Africa that we would prefer rogue elephants harassing tribespeople to be dealt with in non-lethal ways? Come to that, Britain's views on electric harpoons could well be applied to beef in abattoirs - death-soaked places which must be terrifying to animals - which must be guilty of the odd miss-hit.

There is a strong sense that Mr Baldry has taken populism too far - something he has a habit of doing. Remember his view that Britain was not going to give an inch on the European Commission's request that we should reduce the size of our fishing fleet in line with the number of fish left in the sea, until the issue of Spaniards fishing on our quota was resolved. And in the next breath Britain is supposed to be the one trying to conserve stocks while nobody else is?

His pursuit of the animal welfare vote on whaling is part and parcel of his disgraceful flight from a long British tradition of pursuing sound science, not sentiment, on conservation issues. Certainly, Norway does seem to be getting away with steadily increasing its whale quota in the teeth of international opinion. But the question which matters most is: are whales being properly conserved?

The estimate of minke stocks worked out by a committee of scientists from whaling and non-whaling countries suggests the Norwegian quota is justified. The minke whale is scarcely depleted compared with other great whales and will not be by the present Norwegian quota. And Norway's coastal fishing fleet is a far cry from the industrial whalers who devastated the blue and sperm whales in the southern oceans early this century for their oil.

Ironically, it is politically correct to condone the hunting of whales by "aboriginal" whalers - such as the Eskimo, or now the Makah tribe of Washington state (despite the fact that they hunt with speed boats, not sea canoes, and with explosive harpoons instead of sharpened whalebone). Are not the inheritors of the Vikings or of John Peel allowed a culture, too? Does not any move to erode the cultural diversity of small nations and even modern tribes diminish us all?

The irrational need to pronounce all whaling wrong is part of the McDonaldisation of the world, the move towards lightweight ideas, wrapped in disposable language and universally available - even if highly questionable.

A British government has a higher duty than to represent the prejudice and ignorance of its electorate. It has the responsibility of telling its electorate unpleasant truths. It should do so by recognising Norway's - and to some extent, the worse behaved Japan's - right to hunt whale, provided they do so sustainably, openly and according to sound science and with the most humane technology available.

An important principle - the right of each nation to manage nature according to its cultural values - is in danger of being trampled without thought.