The Faroese pilot whale hunt is difficult to watch. But perhaps what makes it exceptional is not the killing itself: It is that the killing remains visible.
When pilot whales approach the Faroe Islands, boats surround the group and drive the animals towards the coast. Their escape route is blocked until they become stranded or trapped in shallow water, where they are restrained and killed.
The hunt, known as the grindadráp, has existed since the Viking Age. In the past, whales provided food and materials in an environment where agriculture was severely limited. Today, however, the Faroe Islands are a modern and affluent European society with supermarkets and access to imported food. The grind remains a tradition, but it is no longer a necessity for survival.
History can explain why the hunt developed. It cannot justify its continuation indefinitely.
Violence without walls
Images of the grind provoke international outrage: whales struggling in shallow water, people gathered around them and seawater turning red. The killing is direct, collective and impossible to separate from the resulting meat.
Most other meat production looks very different, not because it is free from violence, but because that violence has been moved out of sight.
Cows, pigs and chickens are bred, confined, transported and slaughtered behind closed doors. Consumers encounter them only later, divided into anonymous pieces and wrapped in plastic. Kawashima describes the Faroese criticism of people who condemn the grind while ignoring the suffering of livestock whose meat they select from supermarket shelves.
That criticism is justified
It is inconsistent to treat the death of a whale as a tragedy while regarding the killing of a pig, cow or chicken as an ordinary consumer choice. The fact that livestock slaughter is industrialised, familiar and hidden does not make it ethically superior.
Yet this double standard does not excuse the grind. It exposes a much broader problem.
The correct conclusion is not that killing whales is acceptable because we also kill farmed animals. It is that our concern for whales should force us to confront what eating any animal requires.
Tradition does not remove suffering
Supporters often describe the grind as local, communal and non-commercial. The meat and blubber are shared among participants and residents rather than produced primarily for sale.
But suffering does not become less significant because the killing takes place within a community rather than an industry.
The whales are still pursued as a group, prevented from escaping and driven into shallow water before they are killed. Their social behaviour, which makes it possible to drive entire groups together, also means the hunt affects more than isolated individuals.
Regulation and improvements to killing methods may reduce some suffering. They do not make the complete process harmless, nor do they answer the fundamental question of whether it should continue at all.
From food source to symbol
The justification also becomes weaker as the practical importance of the meat declines.
Pilot whales accumulate pollutants through the marine food web. High concentrations of mercury have been detected in their tissues, while pollutants including PCBs and DDT accumulate in their blubber. Faroese recommendations therefore advised adults to consume no more than one meal of pilot-whale meat and blubber per month, with stricter guidance for women who might have children.
A hunt once associated with food security now produces meat that public-health authorities recommend eating only in limited quantities. What remains is increasingly not necessity, but identity.
Culture is important, but culture is not untouchable. Traditions change when circumstances, scientific knowledge and ethical standards change.
The grind should end. But condemning it while continuing to support hidden systems of animal suffering is not enough. The blood on the Faroese coast is confronting because we can see it. The blood behind our own food choices deserves the same attention.
An Article by Carina Zettel