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Japanese fleet catches 177 whales in latest hunt

101 points by Leary 8y ago

yboris 8y ago
My head spins about how schizophrenic the vast majority of the population is when it comes to meat consumption and love of animals. People shed tears over pets, yet pay others to abuse animals (factory farming) just to enjoy a meal that's equivalently tasty to easily available options. People will condemn the Japanese for eating whales or dolphins, the Chinese for eating dogs, meanwhile they themselves cause the suffering of significantly more animals. I hope in very near future, the mocumentary Carnage begins to resemble reality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnage_(2017_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnage_(2017_film)
- dagoat 8y ago
  Sure. But if those same people had a domesticated version of the animal they eat, with a name. Or if that animal was an endangered species. Or both. A lot of these "schizophrenic" people would probably think differently.
- grumbalina 8y ago
  Hey, good job conflating a whole bunch of very different aspects to feed your narrative; pretty much guarantees no one can support your position of one.
  - uxcolumbo 8y ago
    Can you expand on this? I'm not quite following.
  - uhtred 8y ago
    I completely support his position so it's at least a position of two. I don't think he has compounded multiple issues at all, animal cruelty is a single issue. People just like to pretend it's more complicated to avoid facing up to the consequences of their actions.
  - RIMR 8y ago
    This is unnecessarily confrontational and aggressive... Nobody is going to support your position because: 1. We don't know what your position is 2. You're a jerk
  - honkycat 8y ago
    False: Pedantic vegans will support OPs position, and feign ignorance at your point because it's convenient for them to pretend killing a severely endangered whale is the same thing as killing one of the 1.5 billion cows on the planet. Don't expect any better either. Outright lies and false equivalences like this are all they seem capable of. They have been singing the same song for a decade and can't pack in the smug enough to realize it's not working. It's like sitting through D.A.R.E. in grade school: We know what you are doing and we see through it. All it leads to is me considering everything that leaves your mouth a lie. But, the vegan movement does deserve some credit: I will say I have been LOVING the `It's an animal right's issue` position vegan groups have been adopting lately. It's a powerful coherent message, is not smug, and speaks to people at face value instead of condescending to them. It's more "MLK Jr." and less "Women and Women First".
    - uhtred 8y ago
      But the message is working otherwise there wouldn't be a huge increase in the amount of and interest in vegan food products in the last few years :)
- retrac98 8y ago
  Cognitive dissonance is a powerful force.
- achamayou 8y ago
  Chickens and cows (and dogs) aren’t threatened with extinction. Different sets of people have different objections, but as far as whales are concerned, it’s mostly a conservation issue.
  - kgwgk 8y ago
    I imagine many people opposing whale hunting would also oppose whale farming.
    - bribroder 8y ago
      The issue which most people oppose is neither whale hunting nor whale farming but whale extinction. Sei whales and certain subspecies of Minke whales, which are the specific species mentioned, are listed as endangered and near-threatened, respectively, on the IUCN Red List.
      - emodendroket 8y ago
        This article suggests the Minke whale is of "Least Concern." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minke_whale#Population_and_conservation_status https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minke_whale#Population_and_con...
        bribroder 8y ago
        hence "subspecies": http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/2480/0 http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/2480/0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_minke_whale#Conservation_status https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_minke_whale#Conserva... > From 1987 to the present, Japan has been sending a fleet consisting of a single factory ship and several catcher/spotting vessels to the Southern Ocean to catch Antarctic minkes under Article VIII of the IWC, which allows the culling of whales for scientific research. The first research program, Japanese Research Program in the Antarctic (JARPA), began in 1987-88, when 273 Antarctic minkes were caught. The quota and catch soon increased to 330 and 440. In 2005-06, the second research program, JARPA II, began. In its first two years, in what Japan called its "feasibility study", 850 Antarctic minkes, as well as 10 fin whales, were to be taken each season (2005–06 and 2006–07). The quota was reached in the first season, but due to a fire, only 508 Antarctic minkes were caught in the second. In 2007-08, because of constant harassment from environmental groups, they failed to reach the quota again, with a catch of only 551 whales. [...] > In 1966, minke whales became the target of whaling operations off northeastern Brazil (6° – 8°S) due, once again, to the decline of sei whales.
- h4b4n3r0 8y ago
  It’s not just meat, a couple other things cause severe schizophrenia as well: notably, climate change and capitalism.
- craftyguy 8y ago
  Fallacy of relative privation.
- synthmeat 8y ago
  Yeah, lack of self awareness and cognitive dissonance is rampant. On topic of food it’s obvious since, well, everybody eats. Just try asking people around how egg production works. Almost no one around me even had a clue. I even got an answer that chicken lays eggs once a year.
- wpdev_63 8y ago
  This is why I am incredibly excited about the impossible burger:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebNeUihciDI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebNeUihciDI It's the ultimate fake burger that has a 1/10 of the environment while being vegan. Now if there was an equivalent for chicken then it I would never eat another animal again!
  - uhtred 8y ago
    Gardein "chicken" products aren't bad. And tofu and tempeh can be awesome replacements for meat.
  - uxcolumbo 8y ago
    Try the beyondmeat chicken strips [0] And here's a hat tip for wanting to give up meat! [0] https://beyondmeat.com/products https://beyondmeat.com/products
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
      Not really on-topic, but Beyond Meat makes a line of sausages including a bratwurst. This is important to me because I live in Wisconsin and haven't had a brat since becoming a vegetarian as nobody has made a vegetarian version since Boca cancelled theirs. Problem is, the damned things are so popular there's a huge shortage of them.
      - uxcolumbo 8y ago
        Yep - their products are selling like hot cakes at Wholefoods in LA too. It's great to see people making better choices. Ethan Brown is a great entrepreneur with a great mission. Hope prices will come down and they can scale it, so more people can get their products.
  - soared 8y ago
    Another meaning behind OP's comment might be that you can eat food that is equally as tasty as meat, without eating meat or meat replacements. Obviously this wouldn't work for 50+ years since we're all entrenched in eating meat, but vegetarian dishes /can be/ just as tasty. I'd imagine hundreds of years of improving mostly meat dishes has made them better, but that could be fixed.
- bribroder 8y ago
  > equivalently tasty to easily available options Honestly curious, what are these options of equivalent tastiness? Do they pass in blind taste tests with any "mainstream" meats? Are they at the same (or lower) pricepoint? Do they have the same (or better) nutritional value? A lot of people probably agree with your general premise that meat consumption is cruel, but will probably continue eating meat because of one or more of the above.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
    I think parent meant tasty food in general, not that fake meats are equally tasty (even the best aren't). Indian food, for instance, is often vegetarian and tastes amazing.
  - yboris 8y ago
    Just as the AnIdiotOnTheNet (other comment) said: tasty food in general, not specifically food that is meant to imitate meat, eggs, or milk.
- trumped 8y ago
  don't forget about cats... they are spreading like the plague and there's an easy solution to that...
- krylon 8y ago
  FWIW, I do not see how eating a dog or cat is morally worse than eating a cow. I am not a vegetarian, but honestly, that is mostly due to laziness and a fair amount of hypocrisy. And yes, the thought of eating a dolphin or a humpback whale is kind of sickening. I guess that is largely due to Greenpeace and their "Save the Whales" stickers that I remember as being nearly omnipresent in my childhood. The difference, I guess, is that cows (and dogs) were not hunted close to extinction. OTOH, stopping the hunt for whales is one of the few things where a huge number of countries all over the world has been able to find a consensus before whales are a different memory known only from skeletons in museums. Japan is basically giving the rest of the world the finger, and not because they are facing starvation without that precious whale meat.
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    But Minke whales are not close to extinction; isn't objecting to eating a Minke whale because blue whales are endangered something like objecting to eating chicken because passenger pigeons were overhunted?
    - yayana 8y ago
      I don't think your analogy holds. The big issue with granting commercial hunting rights is that you have hunters (and related industries) launching political attacks to expand them using the income and playing the victim when you take them away due to resulting stock decline. Once they are out of minke they will legally or illegally hunt something else. (Whether it is one or the other is just a matter of how much money they have to corrupt policy verse hunting completely illegally like a portion of the fish industry sneaking around the coasts of poor nations.) If they can't play by rules they don't agree with now then they aren't going to play by them when they have expanded on minke, represent a larger portion of some GDP and are looking to keep their larger fleet financed.
      - emodendroket 8y ago
        Taking this argument to its logical conclusion, fishing should be banned altogether.
- j9461701 8y ago
  We don't just condemn Japan for eating whales and dolphins, we already banned them from doing so. Instead Japan claims the whales they're killing are for "scientific research", which is bull and they're clearly in total violation of international accords. But the widespread international condemnation has caused Japan to double down on their whaling industry, as a symbolic attack on outsiders who they view as destroying their 'traditional values'. This is why, despite being a very tiny part of the Japanese diet, the Japanese government supports its whaling industry and keeps it from being shuttered. >My head spins about how schizophrenic the vast majority of the population is when it comes to meat consumption and love of animals. People want cute things to live, and don't care what hell ugly creatures endure. It's a fairly consistent position, if rather vapid and aesthetist. This case is a perfect example: Whales are cute, so we're quite cross at Japan for eating them. But blue fin tuna are ugly, and so despite being much more threatened and a much larger part of the japanese diet, no one really cares.
  - macintux 8y ago
    There's also an intelligence problem. Octopi, whales, dolphins are very smart animals. (Pigs too, but I try not to think about that.)
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
      Well if you're unwilling to think too hard about the intelligence of pigs, I can't see how you can cast judgement on the Japanese for not thinking too hard about the intelligence of whales.
      - macintux 8y ago
        Did you see me casting judgement? I'm just pointing out that there are valid concerns beyond "cute factor".
  - dTal 8y ago
    Whales and tuna look equivalently as cute to me - i.e., not at all. Whales look almost exactly like fish. The reason people object to whale hunting is whales are incredibly intelligent mammals, with a psychology we identify with - social and language-oriented, with lifelong family ties and a love of play.
- 52-6F-62 8y ago
  I don't quite understand what you mean by schizophrenic in with what you describe. Isn't it possible it isn't a unified issue? I grew up in a rural region and I've seen the production first hand both on medium-sized farms to single hunts. I have had pets I've loved and watched them die and it made me sad. I also have an issue with the mass whaling because we know of the extinction risks and the goal when eating an animal isn't to wipe out the species. I will confess, however, I haven't seen one of the American style factory farms. Any I've been to here in Canada haven't been so cold or apparently cruel and nowhere near the size and volume of production. I live in the city now and I consider myself lucky for knowing where all of my food feasibly comes from. For that reason I don't see it as schizophrenic or cognitive dissonance. I like to think it's an accepting awareness— I think we're still very much animals, but ones at least intelligent enough to maintain the planet in good order and to avoid cruelty (if we give a damn). Clearly there are problems in how a lot of food production (not just meat) is carried out, and usually with a root cause of greed. Pegging those problems to people essentially not all resigning to vegan eating makes my head spin a little. Side question for anyone who carries your perspective: I might even agree that refraining from eating any animals is the morally superior option— but do you think we morally owe it to nature (or whatever end) to refrain more than any other animal?
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    I kind of end up with the opposite position of the OP, but if you consider eating a whale or a dog barbaric but have no problem eating (say) an overfished white fish or a pig, you have to ask yourself why.
    - 52-6F-62 8y ago
      edit: Took me a moment to think about what you were saying. I agree with you. Maybe that's what I was roughly getting at to begin with. I agree you should think about why, I suppose I already had and take it for granted that others may not have even approached the need to question. --- I have asked myself why. I have a problem eating any animal that is endangered or at risk of extinction. I might not be against eating a whale. I've never had the opportunity. But I have a problem with hunting them in their current state of risk. I've had what I would call relationships with various animals as pets—as such I wouldn't want to eat them. Similarly, if I'd had such a relationship with any other kind of animal I might feel the same, but I can't speak to that.
- neuralRiot 8y ago
  Let's not forget the environmental impact of current level of meat consumption too, anybody who cares about their future or their children's should be promoting vegetarinsm.
- zhenekas 8y ago
  Well it is all about how you kill animals. People kill animals for food the ones that they grow for food and other animals which population is threatning ecosystem. But killing out of some retarded tradition is idiotic. Especially endangered spieces
  - yboris 8y ago
    It's not "all about how you kill animals". Many vegetarians and vegans care far more about the life that the animals live. The short bit at the end is minuscule in importance compared to the life of torture animals experience in factory farms. I'd rather live a marvelous life and be tortured for a few hours before death, than tortured for a lifetime and then "killed with compassion".
- honkycat 8y ago
  Explain how hunting a severely endangered whale is the same thing as killing one of the 1.5 billion cows on the planet.
  - uhtred 8y ago
    From the cow's or whale's perspective, it's the same.
- ericdykstra 8y ago
  We (humans) have different relationships with different kinds of animals, just like other animals do. We have a symbiotic relationship with companion animals like dogs and cats, work animals like draft horses and service dogs, and farm animals like cows and chicken. These are all beautiful examples of humans and animals evolving together to provide for each other, leading to the reproductive success of both species.
  - dmritard96 8y ago
    " and farm animals like cows and chicken. " Population growth is not equivalent to symbiosis...
    - ericdykstra 8y ago
      I think it’s a decent proxy, since evolutionary/reproductive success is the only motive we can attach to every organism.
- fipar 8y ago
  I don't think you know what schizophrenia is, and you could try to make your same argument without that wrong analogy.
  - yboris 8y ago
    I used the word as an adjective, so, relating to the general definition: a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation. Let's see: a breakdown between thought, emotion and behavior (claim to "love animals" and then pay people to torture them, check), ... fantasy and delusion (refusing to acknowledge the horrendous conditions on factory farms, check) ... a sense of mental fragmentation (love one, but kill the other, check). It's not a far stretch.
    - fipar 8y ago
      If you think it's not a far scretch, my guess is you have not been close enough to and tried to help someone with actual schizophrenia. My guess can be wrong, of course. People are in contact with other people who both love and eat animals (though usually not the same animals). Further, where I live (though probably in a lot of places), vegetarians are a minority, so most people are in contact with meat-eating people, including meat-eating pet owners, and see them as normal people. By comparing them to shizophrenics, you feed the viewpoint that mental problems are not real and that people can just work them out if they really want to, which is not helpful at all to those dealing with mental health problems. It seems animal rights is a cause you care about, which I can understand. Mental health is a cause I care about, and I kindly suggest that you can continue to make your arguments without stretching the definition of any mental illness for that purpose. EDIT: removed double 'seems' and accidental 'using'
      - yboris 8y ago
        Thank you for sharing this. I feel uneasy about having used the word "schizophrenic", especially after reading what you wrote. It was a bit of a nasty tactic on my part because it attracts attention (unfortunate that the internet implicitly incentivizes that). In my regular in-person conversations I don't think I've ever used that word. I'll be more sensitive next time online too. Thank you. As a substitute -- can you think of a word that would very swiftly capture the extreme cognitive dissonance people surely must have to engage in the behavior they currently do?
- PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
  I think that once you get enough of an outside view of any given society, we see the seams fall apart all over the place. Social norms are extremely inconsistent.
- nojvek 8y ago
  I am a vegetarian and have a dog. I love my dog. However I also know I'm a very hypocritic human being. The kibble my dog eats is made of chicken, so I'm actually sponsoring the killing 100's of cute adorable chicks to feed my dog. But my dog doesn't like a vegan diet, probably not healthy for him either. I think the argument I've heard from some of my meat eating friends is "why should we be vegetarians? animals kill other animals, we are also animals. Most animals don't usually kill their own kind. We do the same. At the end nature is quite violent. The most adaptable survive. Humans are the most powerful species because we've killed other potentially powerful species in the race of evolution. Killing to win is in our nature"
slimsag 8y ago
Meanwhile, Norway kills more whales than Japan on average according to the WDC[1] and proceeds to increase their quota for number of whales they can kill[2] all while running government-backed campaigns to market whale-meat as hip-and-trendy[3]. The real gruesome thing here is how we're not just hunting whales, but that the ones we do hunt are roughly 60% of the time pregnant ones[4]. [1] https://us.whales.org/whaling-facts https://us.whales.org/whaling-facts [2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/07/norway-boosts-whaling-quota-international-opposition https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/07/norway-b... [3] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-30/whale-meat-marketed-to-young-norwegians-as-hip-and-trendy/9802006 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-30/whale-meat-marketed-to... [4] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/world/asia/whales-japan.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/world/asia/whales-japan.h...
- paavoova 8y ago
  Iceland and Faroe Islands, as well. Somewhat gruesome "traditionalist" hunting is practiced [1]: baby birds just out of the nest are scooped out of the water and have their heads torn off while still alive. But the sad thing is, it can still be argued to be more humane and sustainable than factory chicken farming. And is probably far healthier, too. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LUv4sEyfcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LUv4sEyfcw
- avar 8y ago
  Whatever anyone thinks about whaling, that article from The Guardian has a clear agenda of taking things out of context. It just says "Norway has announced a 28% increase" in year-over-year whaling. That's true, but compare that to historical values: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NorwegianWhaleCatches.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NorwegianWhaleCatches.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_Norway#/media/File:Whales_Nordic.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_Norway#/media/File:... It's pretty telling that they're not opting to tell you that it's a gradual ramp-up which is still around 1/2 of what they were doing in the 1980s. The larger context here is that in 1992 Iceland, Norway et al. partially split off from the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and formed their own North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission (NAMMCO)[1]. Whaling quotas are now at an impasse where these countries decide them unilaterally, because the members of the IWC won't even have the discussion of what would be a reasonable science-based quota. I have yet to see any suggestion that the whales being hunted in the North-Atlantic by these countries are threatened by these whaling practices. An large year-over-year increase on a relatively small quota tells you nothing. You need to look at how large the total stock is, how long it takes to renew etc. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Marine_Mammal_Commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Marine_Mammal_C...
trumped 8y ago
At least we know the ocean is not empty yet...
- krylon 8y ago
  I have been browsing through Wikipedia articles on various types of whales recently, and I was pleasantly surprised how much some whale populations have recovered since most of the world stopped hunting them. The conservation status of humpback whales is LC ("Least concern"), gray whales, too. It's not all good, far from it, but it is nice to know that collectively, we manage to not mess up everything we touch every once in a while.
  - simmanian 8y ago
    I've heard that much of the recent rise in some whale populations can be attributed to the climate change [1]. Apparently, whales are finding it easier to find food with the polar ice retreating. But, since Krill are vulnerable to acidification and dependent on sea ice, we don't know if the trend will continue. [1] https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/some-whales-are-liking-climate-change-not-being-hunted/ https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/some-whales-are-...
  - trumped 8y ago
    I'm glad that Wikipedia agrees. But yeah, if you can catch 200 whales, there is probably at least a few multiples of that left...
    - krylon 8y ago
      Just to be clear, some whales only recover very slowly. The blue whale is still considered Endangered, or the North Atlantic Right Whale (many more, probably - I am not a whale expert, just an enthusiastic Wikipedia reader). And while they are slowly recovering, we are still changing their habitat (climate change, noise pollution, etc., being run over by large ships is a common cause of death for large whales) in ways that make it harder for them to recover. But the situation is not totally hopeless, which at least feels like a large improvement from the depressing atmosphere I grew up in.
vermooten 8y ago
cunts
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't do this here, regardless of how wrong others are or you feel they are. Also, can you please not post unsubstantive comments to HN generally? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
jondubois 8y ago
I tried Minke whale when I was in Iceland. Unfortunately for them, they taste very good - Maybe the best meat I've tried. It's like a cross between beef and tuna but with a deep, complex (and very slightly gamey) aftertaste. It was surprisingly cheap too. In spite of this, I'm not sure I would eat it again though; while eating it, I kept getting flashbacks of a video I saw of a whale being harpooned and pulled out of the water with blood everywhere. Rationally though, I don't know if eating whales is more immoral than eating other animals. On the plus side, if you kill a single whale, you can feed a lot of people; you could save several dozens of cows... Not to mention that you're saving the lives of millions of krill that would have been eaten by the whale that day. So if you're a shrimp sympathizer, then you should consider whaling a good thing. Personally, I can relate to feeling small and defenseless in this world so I can sympathize with the shrimp on some level.
- paavoova 8y ago
  I wouldn't eat whale simply due to its mercury, PCBs, and other bioaccumulated pollutant content: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5519659/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5519659/ For a 60 kg person, consumption of 100 g of whale meat with the highest concentration of Hg (i.e. MeHg) found in this study (0.49 mg/kg w.w.) would lead to an intake corresponding to 51% of the provisional tolerable weekly intake (PTWI) set by JECFA (1.6 µg/kg bw) or 63% of the tolerable weekly intake (TWI) set by EFSA (1.3 µg/kg bw) 100 grams of meat is very little as far as protein and calories are concerned, but already puts you at risk. Not safe to eat in any sufficient quantity.
- ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
  As someone with experience in animal farming (through family and friends), the whale issue seriously does confuse me. The way commercial meat farming is done is outright fucking disgusting. It's one of the biggest environmental issues of our era. Endangered species should be protected, absolutely. But if we're going to rag on countries for fishing un-endangered whales, it's very much hypocritical. "The IUCN Red List labels the common minke whale as Least Concern.[30] The Antarctic minke whale is listed as Data deficient.[31] COSEWIC puts both species in the Not At Risk category [1]. NatureServe lists them as G5 which means the species is secure on global range [2]." (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minke_whale https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minke_whale) For reference, I try eat as little meat in life as I can in general, and when I do eat it, I try to as ethical as possible. I'm not perfect, but I'm always trying to be better. I try not to judge other cultures on their eating habits though, when we're systematically destroying the planet so our cheeseburgers can be $1.
legostormtroopr 8y ago
I hate the Western eco-hypocrisy when it comes to whaling. Japan (and most of Scandinavia) have been whaling continuously for generations. Dolphin ‘farming’ for hundreds of years without impacting yield or stocks. It’s a huge cultural activity and they protect it. But over the 1800-1900s the US, UK and Australia overfished whales at industrial scales making populations plummet. Whaling towns in Southern Australia literally ran red with rivers of blood. So in the 1970s and 80s after we’d reaped industrial benefit and destroyed wild stock, we Westerners decided that’s whaling was in fact really bad and decided to ban it - because we f’ed it up for everyone. There are arguments about cruelty during whale hunting, but the same can be said for all farming, but the hypocrisy that a group of people can come in decimate an animal population and then tell everyone not to participate in their culture just doesn’t sit right.

101 points by Leary 8y ago

My head spins about how schizophrenic the vast majority of the population is when it comes to meat consumption and love of animals. People shed tears over pets, yet pay others to abuse animals (factory farming) just to enjoy a meal that's equivalently tasty to easily available options. People will condemn the Japanese for eating whales or dolphins, the Chinese for eating dogs, meanwhile they themselves cause the suffering of significantly more animals. I hope in very near future, the mocumentary Carnage begins to resemble reality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnage_(2017_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnage_(2017_film)

dagoat 8y ago
Sure. But if those same people had a domesticated version of the animal they eat, with a name. Or if that animal was an endangered species. Or both. A lot of these "schizophrenic" people would probably think differently.
grumbalina 8y ago
Hey, good job conflating a whole bunch of very different aspects to feed your narrative; pretty much guarantees no one can support your position of one.
- uxcolumbo 8y ago
  Can you expand on this? I'm not quite following.
- uhtred 8y ago
  I completely support his position so it's at least a position of two. I don't think he has compounded multiple issues at all, animal cruelty is a single issue. People just like to pretend it's more complicated to avoid facing up to the consequences of their actions.
- RIMR 8y ago
  This is unnecessarily confrontational and aggressive... Nobody is going to support your position because: 1. We don't know what your position is 2. You're a jerk
- honkycat 8y ago
  False: Pedantic vegans will support OPs position, and feign ignorance at your point because it's convenient for them to pretend killing a severely endangered whale is the same thing as killing one of the 1.5 billion cows on the planet. Don't expect any better either. Outright lies and false equivalences like this are all they seem capable of. They have been singing the same song for a decade and can't pack in the smug enough to realize it's not working. It's like sitting through D.A.R.E. in grade school: We know what you are doing and we see through it. All it leads to is me considering everything that leaves your mouth a lie. But, the vegan movement does deserve some credit: I will say I have been LOVING the `It's an animal right's issue` position vegan groups have been adopting lately. It's a powerful coherent message, is not smug, and speaks to people at face value instead of condescending to them. It's more "MLK Jr." and less "Women and Women First".
  - uhtred 8y ago
    But the message is working otherwise there wouldn't be a huge increase in the amount of and interest in vegan food products in the last few years :)
retrac98 8y ago
Cognitive dissonance is a powerful force.
achamayou 8y ago
Chickens and cows (and dogs) aren’t threatened with extinction. Different sets of people have different objections, but as far as whales are concerned, it’s mostly a conservation issue.
- kgwgk 8y ago
  I imagine many people opposing whale hunting would also oppose whale farming.
  - bribroder 8y ago
    The issue which most people oppose is neither whale hunting nor whale farming but whale extinction. Sei whales and certain subspecies of Minke whales, which are the specific species mentioned, are listed as endangered and near-threatened, respectively, on the IUCN Red List.
    - emodendroket 8y ago
      This article suggests the Minke whale is of "Least Concern." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minke_whale#Population_and_conservation_status https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minke_whale#Population_and_con...
      - bribroder 8y ago
        hence "subspecies": http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/2480/0 http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/2480/0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_minke_whale#Conservation_status https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_minke_whale#Conserva... > From 1987 to the present, Japan has been sending a fleet consisting of a single factory ship and several catcher/spotting vessels to the Southern Ocean to catch Antarctic minkes under Article VIII of the IWC, which allows the culling of whales for scientific research. The first research program, Japanese Research Program in the Antarctic (JARPA), began in 1987-88, when 273 Antarctic minkes were caught. The quota and catch soon increased to 330 and 440. In 2005-06, the second research program, JARPA II, began. In its first two years, in what Japan called its "feasibility study", 850 Antarctic minkes, as well as 10 fin whales, were to be taken each season (2005–06 and 2006–07). The quota was reached in the first season, but due to a fire, only 508 Antarctic minkes were caught in the second. In 2007-08, because of constant harassment from environmental groups, they failed to reach the quota again, with a catch of only 551 whales. [...] > In 1966, minke whales became the target of whaling operations off northeastern Brazil (6° – 8°S) due, once again, to the decline of sei whales.
h4b4n3r0 8y ago
It’s not just meat, a couple other things cause severe schizophrenia as well: notably, climate change and capitalism.
craftyguy 8y ago
Fallacy of relative privation.
synthmeat 8y ago
Yeah, lack of self awareness and cognitive dissonance is rampant. On topic of food it’s obvious since, well, everybody eats. Just try asking people around how egg production works. Almost no one around me even had a clue. I even got an answer that chicken lays eggs once a year.
wpdev_63 8y ago
This is why I am incredibly excited about the impossible burger:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebNeUihciDI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebNeUihciDI It's the ultimate fake burger that has a 1/10 of the environment while being vegan. Now if there was an equivalent for chicken then it I would never eat another animal again!
- uhtred 8y ago
  Gardein "chicken" products aren't bad. And tofu and tempeh can be awesome replacements for meat.
- uxcolumbo 8y ago
  Try the beyondmeat chicken strips [0] And here's a hat tip for wanting to give up meat! [0] https://beyondmeat.com/products https://beyondmeat.com/products
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
    Not really on-topic, but Beyond Meat makes a line of sausages including a bratwurst. This is important to me because I live in Wisconsin and haven't had a brat since becoming a vegetarian as nobody has made a vegetarian version since Boca cancelled theirs. Problem is, the damned things are so popular there's a huge shortage of them.
    - uxcolumbo 8y ago
      Yep - their products are selling like hot cakes at Wholefoods in LA too. It's great to see people making better choices. Ethan Brown is a great entrepreneur with a great mission. Hope prices will come down and they can scale it, so more people can get their products.
- soared 8y ago
  Another meaning behind OP's comment might be that you can eat food that is equally as tasty as meat, without eating meat or meat replacements. Obviously this wouldn't work for 50+ years since we're all entrenched in eating meat, but vegetarian dishes /can be/ just as tasty. I'd imagine hundreds of years of improving mostly meat dishes has made them better, but that could be fixed.
bribroder 8y ago
> equivalently tasty to easily available options Honestly curious, what are these options of equivalent tastiness? Do they pass in blind taste tests with any "mainstream" meats? Are they at the same (or lower) pricepoint? Do they have the same (or better) nutritional value? A lot of people probably agree with your general premise that meat consumption is cruel, but will probably continue eating meat because of one or more of the above.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  I think parent meant tasty food in general, not that fake meats are equally tasty (even the best aren't). Indian food, for instance, is often vegetarian and tastes amazing.
- yboris 8y ago
  Just as the AnIdiotOnTheNet (other comment) said: tasty food in general, not specifically food that is meant to imitate meat, eggs, or milk.
trumped 8y ago
don't forget about cats... they are spreading like the plague and there's an easy solution to that...
krylon 8y ago
FWIW, I do not see how eating a dog or cat is morally worse than eating a cow. I am not a vegetarian, but honestly, that is mostly due to laziness and a fair amount of hypocrisy. And yes, the thought of eating a dolphin or a humpback whale is kind of sickening. I guess that is largely due to Greenpeace and their "Save the Whales" stickers that I remember as being nearly omnipresent in my childhood. The difference, I guess, is that cows (and dogs) were not hunted close to extinction. OTOH, stopping the hunt for whales is one of the few things where a huge number of countries all over the world has been able to find a consensus before whales are a different memory known only from skeletons in museums. Japan is basically giving the rest of the world the finger, and not because they are facing starvation without that precious whale meat.
- emodendroket 8y ago
  But Minke whales are not close to extinction; isn't objecting to eating a Minke whale because blue whales are endangered something like objecting to eating chicken because passenger pigeons were overhunted?
  - yayana 8y ago
    I don't think your analogy holds. The big issue with granting commercial hunting rights is that you have hunters (and related industries) launching political attacks to expand them using the income and playing the victim when you take them away due to resulting stock decline. Once they are out of minke they will legally or illegally hunt something else. (Whether it is one or the other is just a matter of how much money they have to corrupt policy verse hunting completely illegally like a portion of the fish industry sneaking around the coasts of poor nations.) If they can't play by rules they don't agree with now then they aren't going to play by them when they have expanded on minke, represent a larger portion of some GDP and are looking to keep their larger fleet financed.
    - emodendroket 8y ago
      Taking this argument to its logical conclusion, fishing should be banned altogether.
j9461701 8y ago
We don't just condemn Japan for eating whales and dolphins, we already banned them from doing so. Instead Japan claims the whales they're killing are for "scientific research", which is bull and they're clearly in total violation of international accords. But the widespread international condemnation has caused Japan to double down on their whaling industry, as a symbolic attack on outsiders who they view as destroying their 'traditional values'. This is why, despite being a very tiny part of the Japanese diet, the Japanese government supports its whaling industry and keeps it from being shuttered. >My head spins about how schizophrenic the vast majority of the population is when it comes to meat consumption and love of animals. People want cute things to live, and don't care what hell ugly creatures endure. It's a fairly consistent position, if rather vapid and aesthetist. This case is a perfect example: Whales are cute, so we're quite cross at Japan for eating them. But blue fin tuna are ugly, and so despite being much more threatened and a much larger part of the japanese diet, no one really cares.
- macintux 8y ago
  There's also an intelligence problem. Octopi, whales, dolphins are very smart animals. (Pigs too, but I try not to think about that.)
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
    Well if you're unwilling to think too hard about the intelligence of pigs, I can't see how you can cast judgement on the Japanese for not thinking too hard about the intelligence of whales.
    - macintux 8y ago
      Did you see me casting judgement? I'm just pointing out that there are valid concerns beyond "cute factor".
- dTal 8y ago
  Whales and tuna look equivalently as cute to me - i.e., not at all. Whales look almost exactly like fish. The reason people object to whale hunting is whales are incredibly intelligent mammals, with a psychology we identify with - social and language-oriented, with lifelong family ties and a love of play.
52-6F-62 8y ago
I don't quite understand what you mean by schizophrenic in with what you describe. Isn't it possible it isn't a unified issue? I grew up in a rural region and I've seen the production first hand both on medium-sized farms to single hunts. I have had pets I've loved and watched them die and it made me sad. I also have an issue with the mass whaling because we know of the extinction risks and the goal when eating an animal isn't to wipe out the species. I will confess, however, I haven't seen one of the American style factory farms. Any I've been to here in Canada haven't been so cold or apparently cruel and nowhere near the size and volume of production. I live in the city now and I consider myself lucky for knowing where all of my food feasibly comes from. For that reason I don't see it as schizophrenic or cognitive dissonance. I like to think it's an accepting awareness— I think we're still very much animals, but ones at least intelligent enough to maintain the planet in good order and to avoid cruelty (if we give a damn). Clearly there are problems in how a lot of food production (not just meat) is carried out, and usually with a root cause of greed. Pegging those problems to people essentially not all resigning to vegan eating makes my head spin a little. Side question for anyone who carries your perspective: I might even agree that refraining from eating any animals is the morally superior option— but do you think we morally owe it to nature (or whatever end) to refrain more than any other animal?
- emodendroket 8y ago
  I kind of end up with the opposite position of the OP, but if you consider eating a whale or a dog barbaric but have no problem eating (say) an overfished white fish or a pig, you have to ask yourself why.
  - 52-6F-62 8y ago
    edit: Took me a moment to think about what you were saying. I agree with you. Maybe that's what I was roughly getting at to begin with. I agree you should think about why, I suppose I already had and take it for granted that others may not have even approached the need to question. --- I have asked myself why. I have a problem eating any animal that is endangered or at risk of extinction. I might not be against eating a whale. I've never had the opportunity. But I have a problem with hunting them in their current state of risk. I've had what I would call relationships with various animals as pets—as such I wouldn't want to eat them. Similarly, if I'd had such a relationship with any other kind of animal I might feel the same, but I can't speak to that.
neuralRiot 8y ago
Let's not forget the environmental impact of current level of meat consumption too, anybody who cares about their future or their children's should be promoting vegetarinsm.
zhenekas 8y ago
Well it is all about how you kill animals. People kill animals for food the ones that they grow for food and other animals which population is threatning ecosystem. But killing out of some retarded tradition is idiotic. Especially endangered spieces
- yboris 8y ago
  It's not "all about how you kill animals". Many vegetarians and vegans care far more about the life that the animals live. The short bit at the end is minuscule in importance compared to the life of torture animals experience in factory farms. I'd rather live a marvelous life and be tortured for a few hours before death, than tortured for a lifetime and then "killed with compassion".
honkycat 8y ago
Explain how hunting a severely endangered whale is the same thing as killing one of the 1.5 billion cows on the planet.
- uhtred 8y ago
  From the cow's or whale's perspective, it's the same.
ericdykstra 8y ago
We (humans) have different relationships with different kinds of animals, just like other animals do. We have a symbiotic relationship with companion animals like dogs and cats, work animals like draft horses and service dogs, and farm animals like cows and chicken. These are all beautiful examples of humans and animals evolving together to provide for each other, leading to the reproductive success of both species.
- dmritard96 8y ago
  " and farm animals like cows and chicken. " Population growth is not equivalent to symbiosis...
  - ericdykstra 8y ago
    I think it’s a decent proxy, since evolutionary/reproductive success is the only motive we can attach to every organism.
fipar 8y ago
I don't think you know what schizophrenia is, and you could try to make your same argument without that wrong analogy.
- yboris 8y ago
  I used the word as an adjective, so, relating to the general definition: a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation. Let's see: a breakdown between thought, emotion and behavior (claim to "love animals" and then pay people to torture them, check), ... fantasy and delusion (refusing to acknowledge the horrendous conditions on factory farms, check) ... a sense of mental fragmentation (love one, but kill the other, check). It's not a far stretch.
  - fipar 8y ago
    If you think it's not a far scretch, my guess is you have not been close enough to and tried to help someone with actual schizophrenia. My guess can be wrong, of course. People are in contact with other people who both love and eat animals (though usually not the same animals). Further, where I live (though probably in a lot of places), vegetarians are a minority, so most people are in contact with meat-eating people, including meat-eating pet owners, and see them as normal people. By comparing them to shizophrenics, you feed the viewpoint that mental problems are not real and that people can just work them out if they really want to, which is not helpful at all to those dealing with mental health problems. It seems animal rights is a cause you care about, which I can understand. Mental health is a cause I care about, and I kindly suggest that you can continue to make your arguments without stretching the definition of any mental illness for that purpose. EDIT: removed double 'seems' and accidental 'using'
    - yboris 8y ago
      Thank you for sharing this. I feel uneasy about having used the word "schizophrenic", especially after reading what you wrote. It was a bit of a nasty tactic on my part because it attracts attention (unfortunate that the internet implicitly incentivizes that). In my regular in-person conversations I don't think I've ever used that word. I'll be more sensitive next time online too. Thank you. As a substitute -- can you think of a word that would very swiftly capture the extreme cognitive dissonance people surely must have to engage in the behavior they currently do?
PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
I think that once you get enough of an outside view of any given society, we see the seams fall apart all over the place. Social norms are extremely inconsistent.
nojvek 8y ago
I am a vegetarian and have a dog. I love my dog. However I also know I'm a very hypocritic human being. The kibble my dog eats is made of chicken, so I'm actually sponsoring the killing 100's of cute adorable chicks to feed my dog. But my dog doesn't like a vegan diet, probably not healthy for him either. I think the argument I've heard from some of my meat eating friends is "why should we be vegetarians? animals kill other animals, we are also animals. Most animals don't usually kill their own kind. We do the same. At the end nature is quite violent. The most adaptable survive. Humans are the most powerful species because we've killed other potentially powerful species in the race of evolution. Killing to win is in our nature"

slimsag 8y ago

Meanwhile, Norway kills more whales than Japan on average according to the WDC[1] and proceeds to increase their quota for number of whales they can kill[2] all while running government-backed campaigns to market whale-meat as hip-and-trendy[3]. The real gruesome thing here is how we're not just hunting whales, but that the ones we do hunt are roughly 60% of the time pregnant ones[4]. [1] https://us.whales.org/whaling-facts https://us.whales.org/whaling-facts [2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/07/norway-boosts-whaling-quota-international-opposition https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/07/norway-b... [3] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-30/whale-meat-marketed-to-young-norwegians-as-hip-and-trendy/9802006 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-30/whale-meat-marketed-to... [4] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/world/asia/whales-japan.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/world/asia/whales-japan.h...

paavoova 8y ago
Iceland and Faroe Islands, as well. Somewhat gruesome "traditionalist" hunting is practiced [1]: baby birds just out of the nest are scooped out of the water and have their heads torn off while still alive. But the sad thing is, it can still be argued to be more humane and sustainable than factory chicken farming. And is probably far healthier, too. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LUv4sEyfcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LUv4sEyfcw
avar 8y ago
Whatever anyone thinks about whaling, that article from The Guardian has a clear agenda of taking things out of context. It just says "Norway has announced a 28% increase" in year-over-year whaling. That's true, but compare that to historical values: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NorwegianWhaleCatches.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NorwegianWhaleCatches.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_Norway#/media/File:Whales_Nordic.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_Norway#/media/File:... It's pretty telling that they're not opting to tell you that it's a gradual ramp-up which is still around 1/2 of what they were doing in the 1980s. The larger context here is that in 1992 Iceland, Norway et al. partially split off from the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and formed their own North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission (NAMMCO)[1]. Whaling quotas are now at an impasse where these countries decide them unilaterally, because the members of the IWC won't even have the discussion of what would be a reasonable science-based quota. I have yet to see any suggestion that the whales being hunted in the North-Atlantic by these countries are threatened by these whaling practices. An large year-over-year increase on a relatively small quota tells you nothing. You need to look at how large the total stock is, how long it takes to renew etc. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Marine_Mammal_Commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Marine_Mammal_C...

trumped 8y ago

At least we know the ocean is not empty yet...

krylon 8y ago
I have been browsing through Wikipedia articles on various types of whales recently, and I was pleasantly surprised how much some whale populations have recovered since most of the world stopped hunting them. The conservation status of humpback whales is LC ("Least concern"), gray whales, too. It's not all good, far from it, but it is nice to know that collectively, we manage to not mess up everything we touch every once in a while.
- simmanian 8y ago
  I've heard that much of the recent rise in some whale populations can be attributed to the climate change [1]. Apparently, whales are finding it easier to find food with the polar ice retreating. But, since Krill are vulnerable to acidification and dependent on sea ice, we don't know if the trend will continue. [1] https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/some-whales-are-liking-climate-change-not-being-hunted/ https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/some-whales-are-...
- trumped 8y ago
  I'm glad that Wikipedia agrees. But yeah, if you can catch 200 whales, there is probably at least a few multiples of that left...
  - krylon 8y ago
    Just to be clear, some whales only recover very slowly. The blue whale is still considered Endangered, or the North Atlantic Right Whale (many more, probably - I am not a whale expert, just an enthusiastic Wikipedia reader). And while they are slowly recovering, we are still changing their habitat (climate change, noise pollution, etc., being run over by large ships is a common cause of death for large whales) in ways that make it harder for them to recover. But the situation is not totally hopeless, which at least feels like a large improvement from the depressing atmosphere I grew up in.

vermooten 8y ago

cunts

dang 8y ago
Please don't do this here, regardless of how wrong others are or you feel they are. Also, can you please not post unsubstantive comments to HN generally? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

jondubois 8y ago

I tried Minke whale when I was in Iceland. Unfortunately for them, they taste very good - Maybe the best meat I've tried. It's like a cross between beef and tuna but with a deep, complex (and very slightly gamey) aftertaste. It was surprisingly cheap too. In spite of this, I'm not sure I would eat it again though; while eating it, I kept getting flashbacks of a video I saw of a whale being harpooned and pulled out of the water with blood everywhere. Rationally though, I don't know if eating whales is more immoral than eating other animals. On the plus side, if you kill a single whale, you can feed a lot of people; you could save several dozens of cows... Not to mention that you're saving the lives of millions of krill that would have been eaten by the whale that day. So if you're a shrimp sympathizer, then you should consider whaling a good thing. Personally, I can relate to feeling small and defenseless in this world so I can sympathize with the shrimp on some level.

paavoova 8y ago
I wouldn't eat whale simply due to its mercury, PCBs, and other bioaccumulated pollutant content: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5519659/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5519659/ For a 60 kg person, consumption of 100 g of whale meat with the highest concentration of Hg (i.e. MeHg) found in this study (0.49 mg/kg w.w.) would lead to an intake corresponding to 51% of the provisional tolerable weekly intake (PTWI) set by JECFA (1.6 µg/kg bw) or 63% of the tolerable weekly intake (TWI) set by EFSA (1.3 µg/kg bw) 100 grams of meat is very little as far as protein and calories are concerned, but already puts you at risk. Not safe to eat in any sufficient quantity.
ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
As someone with experience in animal farming (through family and friends), the whale issue seriously does confuse me. The way commercial meat farming is done is outright fucking disgusting. It's one of the biggest environmental issues of our era. Endangered species should be protected, absolutely. But if we're going to rag on countries for fishing un-endangered whales, it's very much hypocritical. "The IUCN Red List labels the common minke whale as Least Concern.[30] The Antarctic minke whale is listed as Data deficient.[31] COSEWIC puts both species in the Not At Risk category [1]. NatureServe lists them as G5 which means the species is secure on global range [2]." (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minke_whale https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minke_whale) For reference, I try eat as little meat in life as I can in general, and when I do eat it, I try to as ethical as possible. I'm not perfect, but I'm always trying to be better. I try not to judge other cultures on their eating habits though, when we're systematically destroying the planet so our cheeseburgers can be $1.

legostormtroopr 8y ago

I hate the Western eco-hypocrisy when it comes to whaling. Japan (and most of Scandinavia) have been whaling continuously for generations. Dolphin ‘farming’ for hundreds of years without impacting yield or stocks. It’s a huge cultural activity and they protect it. But over the 1800-1900s the US, UK and Australia overfished whales at industrial scales making populations plummet. Whaling towns in Southern Australia literally ran red with rivers of blood. So in the 1970s and 80s after we’d reaped industrial benefit and destroyed wild stock, we Westerners decided that’s whaling was in fact really bad and decided to ban it - because we f’ed it up for everyone. There are arguments about cruelty during whale hunting, but the same can be said for all farming, but the hypocrisy that a group of people can come in decimate an animal population and then tell everyone not to participate in their culture just doesn’t sit right.