Orthodox Hindus venerate cows, believing them to possess divine qualities. They prohibit the consumption of beef and, with the exception of the communist ruled states of Kerala and West Bengal, it is illegal to slaughter cows in India.
But while some religious Hindus think the European cattle industry's recent travails over foot and mouth disease and BSE bolsters the moral arguments against eating cows, the Indian government shows no interest in promoting a world-wide ban on beef. It understands that any attempt to pressure others to follow Hindu religious precepts would be fiercely resisted by many countries, and rightly denounced as cultural imperialism.
In the past few decades, many Westerners have come to venerate cetaceans, the zoological order which comprises the 80 or so species of whales, dolphins and porpoises. Cetaceans are increasingly associated with very desirable, even divine qualities -- high intelligence, spirituality, and a benevolent attitude towards humans; an attitude, so we are told, that we don't deserve, given the way we have cruelly exploited these beautiful creatures.
These Westerners want a permanent world-wide ban on whaling, although a few of them are grudgingly prepared to allow very limited subsistence hunting of whales by certain indigenous peoples. Reacting to this pressure from the cetacean venerators, the governments of Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain and the United States -- all representing voracious cattle killing and beef eating populations -- now oppose any form of commercial whaling.
They become indignant when they are accused of cultural imperialism by people who wish to continue eating whale meat, like the Japanese. As these governments and the anti-whaling activists who support them see it, they are fighting for a universal ethical principle, not a recently developed cultural preference. And they are angry about Japan's success in thwarting a proposal for a South Pacific whale sanctuary at the recently concluded meeting of the International Whaling Commission by using aid to bribe Caribbean members of the IWC.
There is a considerable amount of effrontery in their response to Japan. The IWC was established in 1946 by fourteen whaling nations to assist the orderly development of the industry by encouraging the proper conservation of whale stocks. But as whale devotion gathered momentum in the 1970s, the United States and environmentalist NGOs induced a number of non-whaling nations to join the IWC, intending to create a majority in favour of ending the whaling industry, in contravention of the IWC's own charter.
In 1982 this expanded IWC instituted a moratorium on all commercial whaling, to take effect from 1986. Japan and its pro-whaling allies such as Norway have merely used tactics that are little different from those that the anti-whalers earlier used against them.
Despite various attempts by animal rights and conservation organisations to obfuscate the issue, only a few whale species, such as the blue and the humpback, can be portrayed as endangered. Most of the other commercially valued species are abundant, and would face no threat of extinction under a properly controlled resumption of the whaling industry.
A good illustration of the kind of humbug that often characterises the anti-whaling forces came from New Zealand's leftist Minister of Conservation, Sandra Lee, at last year's IWC meeting. Vowing that she would never stop seeking to protect whales, Ms Lee told delegates that in Maori legend the great whales were portrayed as guides and guardians of humans on the oceans, "treasure, to be preserved ... the chiefly peoples of the ocean world".
This is true. But Ms Lee, who is a Maori herself, seems to have omitted a crucial fact from her impassioned speech. Their legends did not prevent the Maori from being avid consumers of the meat, oil and other products of cetaceans. Beached whales were butchered and became the property of the local chief, who would share the carcass with his group. Smaller cetaceans were actively hunted with harpoons and nets.
Furthermore, the official Maori position, as expressed by Te Ohu Kai Moana, the Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission, is opposed to the New Zealand government's backing of the South Pacific whale sanctuary. Te Ohu Kai Moana supports the right of "indigenous and coastal peoples" around the world to engage in sustainable commercial whaling, and condemns the New Zealand government for not consulting properly with Maori about the whale sanctuary proposal.
Perhaps I should make it clear that I am fond of cetaceans, as I am of many other animals. On the few occasions that I have seen whales I have been captivated. And one of the more memorable sights of my life was standing on the deck of an inter-island vessel in Vanuatu and watching a large pod of dolphins lead us into port. Two by two, the dolphins on both flanks would suddenly veer away in perfect unison and fall back, until only the lead dolphin remained.
I also think it is in Australia's economic interest to encourage fascination with cetaceans, because of the tourist dollars that flow into places such as Queensland's Hervey Bay from whale watchers, or into Monkey Mia in Western Australia from people who want to have an encounter with wild dolphins.
But despite all the sentimentality, the moral status of cetaceans is no different from that of other mammals. Most of us countenance the humane killing of various animal species in order to meet our needs. Until the Australian, New Zealand and other anti-whaling governments start promoting strict vegetarianism as an international goal, they have no right to impose their cultural or religious preferences on the world's whale meat eaters.
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