J a p a n e s e    C u l t u r e

This is a picture copyright

I am strongly opposed to the opposition to Japanese dolphin hunting.

I think that dolphins are more intelligent than cows and pigs, and am sad about their death.

However,
1) I think that cows and pigs are intelligent,

2) I do not think that intelligence is an acid test of what should be killed. Sensitivity to suffering might be equally valid. I think that cows are very sensitive to their suffering.

3) I think that cows and pigs have a far, far, far worse life in and bred for, captivity, especially when boxed all their lives.

I think that slaughtering dolphins in coves appears appaling, because

1) It is

2) One can view it .
Essentially, hunting takes place in the place that the animals live, so it is viewable. Abbattoir slaughter takes place in closed environments controlled by the meat eaters.
The scenes from "The Cove" are unlike the scenes in abattoirs in many ways. But I believe that equally gruesome things are going on in abbatoirs, at vastly greater scale, especially after having visited one.

3) There is a contrast between the freedom of the animals and their death.
If an animal has been bred for food, and especially has lived all its life in a cage, the the horror of its demise may appear deminished. However this lack of contrast hides the true horror, that of living ones life in a box bound for slaughter. Battery farming of cattle, pigs and chickens is, in my view, so much more unpleasant than killing wild animals that it is difficult to compare. The slaughter of battery farmed animals is infinately more disgusting than the slaughter of wild species due to the hellishness of the life that the animals have lead prior to their death.

The slaughter of the hunt appears appalling from a third person perspective, because the third person sees the contrast between freedom and the death. But from the first person/animal perspective (which should be? what counts) the un-hunted, bred to die animal is vastly more miserable.

Ric O'Barry guy goes to Japanese supermarkets to lament the death of his "friends." Does he have no friends who are cows bred in cages for beefburgers? Does he not care for their thousands of times, hundreds of thousands of times, more miserable existance?

I deeply opposed to his group, bearing in mind the vastly, enourmously, grotesquely (I lack adverbs) greater suffering going on in other means of human protein production, compared to the yet tragic slaugher of dolpins.

It seems to me that this movement is a cultural defense mechanism. The movement is in part, I feel, an attempt to allow those that participate in the movement, or have sympathy with the movement, to forget the infinitely more profound horror of slaughtering animals bred and living in small cages, to die by a slightly quicker means.

Would you rather have been born a dolpin that died in Taji, or a cow that lived and died in a battery farm?

Is there even a question? The answer is no. There is no question. The horror of the "beef" (cow) that became a burger is so far worse, that there is no question, no viable comparison. The dolpin was hunted and killed, in pain. The cow's whole life was hell.

Weep by all means for the dolphins that die in Taji. And do not eat them. And do not go to dolphin shows in aquaria. And if you feel this sadness, or even if you don't, go wild, wild, wild with grief, and rage, for the life of the animal that made up your protein in the food that you will eat today.

Take out the plank in your own eye Mr. O'Barry. Take out the redwood tree in the eyes of your peers, before you point out the splinter in the eyes of others.

Disgusting. Ric O'Barry and his movement disgusts me.