Date published: 2006/06/18
The BBC says:
Australia is to present what it says is proof that Japan's scientific whaling programme is cruel to the meeting of the International Whaling Commission.
Environmentalists who filmed Japanese boats whaling in the Antarctic say that some animals took 30 minutes to die; Japan says these cases are exceptions.
Caribbean nations have criticised the West for a "colonial" attitude.
...
The footage has now been analysed by scientists working with another conservation group, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw)."We found that for one whale the time to death was over half an hour, we found that the average time to death was 10 minutes," said Ifaw's Vassili Papastavrou, "and in two out of the 16 occasions, asphyxiation was the likely form of death."
The whales were asphyxiated, he said, because harpoons entered their bodies near the tail and the animals were held upside down in the water.
"Back in the 1950s it was recognised that whaling was inhumane, and really nothing very much has changed since then," Mr Papastavrou told BBC News.
...
Australia's environment minister Ian Campbell described the footage as "absolutely inhumane and quite disgusting."It is a horrendous thing ... it is absolutely abysmal, it is wrong and it has to stop," he told reporters.
Japan's deputy whaling commissioner Joji Morishita countered by pinpointing Australia's annual cull of millions of kangaroos.
"I just wonder if the minister knows how long it will take for kangaroos to die in his country?" he said.
Ifaw is correct that "nothing very much has changed" since the 1950s on this score, so this "proof" is nothing new. And as the Japanese whaling commissioner pointed out, Australia, and all the other anti-whaling nations, also commit their fair share of cruel behaviour, so this is all pantomime rather than a serious debate.
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