Whaling

Con deals with semantics. I used the term "humane" because people tend to associate it with non-cruelty. Con does not address that exploding harpoons are generally not a cruel or painful death for the animal. I will ignore the clear sustainability of whaling because my opponent is dodging the fact that it exists. Compared to the million whales there are in the world, 2,000 is a small amount. It is equivalent to one whale killed per 500 in the wild. The difference between the practices Con names and whaling is that they are both inherently cruel. As I mentioned, whaling is not. I also believe that indigenous tribes should utilize modern weapons in their whaling versus the old-fashioned implements currently in use for this very reason. They are also both against human beings by other human beings. Harming a human in these ways helps nobody. Whaling provides food and jobs for hundreds to thousands of people. Humans do NOT have the right to life over every other species. We have earned the privilege to life over all others. We are the most intelligent beings and thus evaded being killed by any other large animal. I say large because mosquitos and bacteria still harm us, but not to extinction or endangerment. This is called being the dominant species. We are capable of hunting any animal we choose, and some of us choose to hunt whales for food. Animals kill others for food, and humans are simply the dominant animal in this world. All sentient animals have the right not to suffer. That includes people. We also have a moral obligation to maintain this world we effectively control so to not have animals suffer. No intelligent species excepting a very few people practices cannibalism and is always seen as taboo. Modern humans tend to fall under the category of "intelligent species". Yes, humans "only" have our superior intelligence. But it is a grand weapon in the fight for ecological dominance. Intelligence does not, however, "put us above all others". It simply allowed humans to put ourselves above all others. We do not necessarily deserve to be on top. Yet, we clearly did. And that is never going to change. As I said, when hunting a non-human animal, any sentient species has the right to not suffer, and a smarter animal has the same right to not suffer as a dumb animal. My opponent states that it is "not okay to kill anything". She states that it is more unethical to kill a human than a chimpanzee, and has earlier stated that whales and chimps are similarly intelligent. Yet she believes killing a whale is akin to killing a human? Anyway, whales are certainly intelligent. Yet as I have stated, pigs are also intelligent. Yet we cruelly raise and slaughter millions of them every year. Unfortunately for my opponent, such a moral hierarchy does not really work out in the real world. However, it is in a way, existent for whaling. Whales are hunted in very small numbers compared to other, less intelligent animals. My opponent and I disagree over which life is better: a free roaming whale, who has lived a good life, and is quickly killed, or a factory-farmed pig, raised in a filthy cage, and has no life at all, and is quickly killed. I believe it is more ethical to allow the whale's good life, and end it, than to raise a pig so disgustingly that it has no life to be ended. I apologize for sounding so biased against farming pigs, but sadly this is the only way to economically raise enough to feed so many people. I do not believe it at all ethical to raise a pig so that it has no sense of life's value. Would you rather die having enjoyed a good life or die having suffered through a bad one? Keep in mind that a hunted whale and a farmed pig will both someday die. Those 50 cows live with no chance at a good life. They have lived a bad life. You take the life away from fifty animals, each of which is sentient and feels pain. The whale lived a good life, and there is no evidence that they are capable of "looking forward" into life. It knows only that it has been happy, and it is killed quickly. This "condition" con describes is completely arbitrary, and literally means that the farmer says "this cow should die" and it is somehow now ethically acceptable? Cows absolutely have self-awareness and feel pain. I don't think my opponent can find a source that states they don't. One cow or a thousand bugs do not feed a thousand people for very long. The point is that for a given amount of people eating beef, you have to kill many more animals than for the same people eating whale. And my opponent states it is "not okay to kill anything". Then nothing is really okay, but the cows' situation is 50x as "not okay." While a farmer is certainly responsible for ethically treating his animals, he rarely does. Modern farming is not what we all wish it was. The farmer is also, as my opponent seems to have omitted, responsible for killing the pig when slaughter-time rolls along. The hunter hunts an animal that he knows has lived a natural and good life in the wild, and kills it humanely. The circle of life can be drawn many ways. "The farmer gives to the pig, the pig gives back" "Nature gives to the pig, the hunter, and then back to itself" "Nature gives to the whale, many many people, then back to itself." Any whale or any pig is better off with what nature gives than anything man can provide. Nature is the perfect farmer, and we are the farmer's family. I would encourage my opponent to find a source stating that baleen whales (the subject of this debate) exhibit self-awareness. All I could find regarded dolphins. Many animals have fascinating systems of communication, such as squid or frogs. Yet many people kill them for food. Much of my opponent's information on intelligence refers to dolphins. Yes, dolphins are extremely intelligent, but killing them is another debate altogether. Baleen whales and dolphins are more different than one might think. Not much research has been done on the intelligence of baleen whales. My opponent's health argument's source seems to have omitted some kinds of meat. In fact, in a chart I found, all baleen whale meat does not have dangerous levels of mercury. Blubber, liver, and certain other kinds of tissue however, do. Virtually all meat samples contain less than one half of a microgram of mercury per gram of meat. This is similar to or less than the levels in most commercial fish. However, in Japan, some companies illegally sell dolphin meat as baleen whale meat. Dolphins are very high trophic feeders and contain hazardous levels of mercery as well as other toxins. Conclusion: My opponent seems to believe that all killing of animals is unethical, and thus to her, whaling certainly must be. The ethics of eating meat are a debate in themselves. I however, believe that killing of animals is ethical because it is what animals do to survive, and human beings are animals. As long as it is done in a non-cruel fashion, and the meat is used to feed people, and the species hunted is not endangered, there is no problem with it. I consider it more ethical than farming because the whale lives a happy life in the wide open ocean, and then inevitably, death comes to it one day. Whereas in farming, despite the fact that the animal is destined for unnatural death, (which the animal has no awareness of), the animal does not live a free and natural life prior to its death. I am referring to real life farms here. We all wish farms were like Old MacDonald's, but they simply are not. Simply put, when a happy animal is hunted, my opponent does not like that the happy life was cut short, while I like that the animal was happy during the life it was given. I feel better knowing the animal lived well rather than knowing that it wanted to die.