On Whaling and Omnivores

There’s been quite a brouhaha regarding Japanese whaling (much of which is misnamed "research"), with whalers taking (and releasing) hostages and accusations of white supremacy (of Australians against the Japanese).  But as Peter Singer writes in "Harpooned by Hypocrisy" in this morning’s Guardian Unlimited (yes, Peter Singer, and don’t write me to tell me he’s a utilitarian–I know. Try to focus on this statement that you probably agree with.): "If there were some life-or-death need that humans could meet only by killing whales, perhaps the ethical case could be countered. But everything we get from whales can be obtained without cruelty elsewhere. Thus, whaling is unethical." He does say perhaps an ethical case could be made.

Singer writes that whales cannot be humanely killed, but that’s not the point. It’s not unnecessary, inhumane killing of sentient beings that’s unethical. It’s killing them at all that’s unethical.

Furthermore, Singer finds . . .

"one argument that is not easily dismissed. They claim that western countries are just trying to impose their cultural beliefs on the Japanese. The best response to this argument is that the wrongness of causing needless suffering to sentient beings is not culturally specific. (It is, for instance, a precept of Japanese Buddhism.)

But western nations are in a weak position to make this response, because they inflict so much unnecessary suffering on animals – through culling (the Australian slaughter of kangaroos), hunting and factory farms. The west will have little defence against the charge of cultural bias until it addresses needless animal suffering in its own back yard."

What I’d like to move toward, is a time when arguments based on culture or tradition are easily dismissed. I’d like to propose a culture filter of sorts, where you take an action and put it through the culture filter, which catches the rationale of we-do-it-today-because-we-did-it-yesterday-and-we-define-ourselves-by-that-cycle. What’s left is the action. Is it ethical or not?

Let’s take whaling and put it through the culture filter. What comes out is the killing of sentient beings without necessity. Who’s doing the killing and what does it say about their culture or what does it mean to their culture? It doesn’t matter. If you’re slaughtering sentient beings and you don’t need to, the action is unethical.

Let’s take chickens. Part of American culture is the consuming of the flesh and secretions of certain animals whom we have deemed "food animals." We breed chickens so that we may eat their flesh and eggs. But when we filter out American culture, what we’re left with is the breeding of chickens to ultimately slaughter them and eat them when we don’t need to. Killing sentient beings without necessity. Just like whaling.

Unlike people who talk about the large brain or the intelligence of whales, I don’t think that’s the issue. We simply should be using sentient nonhumans when we don’t need to (and I’m hard-pressed to find a need to use them). They have a right to their lives without our intervention, manipulation, dominance and control. Whaling, therefore, is not as different from eating animals than we like to think. Whether you’re doing the dirty work yourself, or paying someone to do it for you, the end result is the same: unethical behavior.