Alick Simmons spent most of his career in public service serving as the UK Food Standards Agency’s Veterinary Director (2004-2007) and the UK Government’s Deputy Chief Veterinary Officer (2007-2015).
He is the current chair of the Zoological Society of London’s Ethics Committee on Animal Research and a member of the Wild Animal Welfare Committee. He sits as an independent member of both the RSPB’s Ethics Advisory Committee and the National Trust’s Wildlife Management Advisory Group. He is former chair of the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare and the Humane Slaughter Association.
He is an avid amateur naturalist.
His book Treated Like Animals: improving the lives of the creatures we own, eat and use was published by Pelagic Publishing in 2023 and reviewed on this blog – click here.
The Faroe Islands’ Grindadráp: whose business is it?
A few months ago, I had an article published in a science journal. There’s nothing particularly remarkable about that. Except it was about the capture and killing of small cetaceans in a country I’ve never visited. Here it is, It’s open access: https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2024.1368524:
Given my background (a government veterinarian, mainly based in the UK), writing about the welfare of cetaceans might seem a little odd. Permit me to explain.
My career controlling disease in farmed animals and the protection of public health inevitably involved the killing of both diseased and healthy animals. That, along with protracted periods working on government policy and a period chairing the Humane Slaughter Association (https://www.hsa.org.uk), meant I had amassed considerable knowledge of and experience in humane slaughter. And since leaving public service, I’ve also taken a keen interest in the welfare of wildlife. Hence the book, Treated Like Animals (reviewed here).
About a year ago, my interest in the traditional capture and killing of small cetaceans in the Faroe Islands, the Grindadráp, was piqued by a series of videos (eg click here). Questions that immediately sprung to mind were ‘Is this humane?’ and ‘For pity’s sake, why?’
Answering the first question is not quite as straightforward as it looks. I had to delve deep into anatomy and physiology texts for both terrestrial mammals and cetaceans – the latter is quite limited but it soon became obvious that the differences were profound and pertinent to understanding the Grindadráp. I was keen to understand the process – to the extent that with the help of EBay, my son and his friend, the welder, I made a copy of the spinal lance used to kill the pilot whales.
And if you read the paper, it quickly becomes clear that the differences in cetacean anatomy and physiology, along with the events leading up to the killing, mean the process from start to finish is inhumane. It would be superfluous to detail the shortcomings here since I believe the article sets these out clearly. However, the very nature of a science journal requires objectivity and detachment. Emotion shouldn’t come into it. But what do I really think? In other words, what’s the answer to the second question, ‘For pity’s sake, why?’
Why, indeed? Like bull-fighting and fox-hunting, the egregious and gut-churning spectacle of the Grindadráp is defended because it is a tradition – it’s been going on for hundreds of years and, it is argued, is an important source of protein for the islanders. However, like the former two pursuits, it is demonstrably inhumane and, objectively, given the alternatives of safer food like fish or lamb – both of which are abundant on the Faroes, it is reasonable to ask why continue with such a barbaric practice?
The Faroe Islanders’ response to the increasing chorus of criticism is generally ‘This is what we do and it’s none of your business’. Which might have been fair comment half a century ago but it’s not something we should accept in 2024. There are reasons for this:
- Wildlife is for everyone. The law varies around the world but, in general, the position is that either wildlife belongs to no one or it belongs to everybody. Which pretty much amounts to the same thing. It does mean that we, the citizen, should get a say, particularly when it’s a free-ranging animal that could, potentially, turn up anywhere. In other words, in our globalised society, we need to be able to hold each other to account.
- The three species of cetaceans killed on the Faroes are listed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature as being of Least Concern but merely because an animal is abundant doesn’t mean it’s a free-for-all. That was tried with the Great Auk and the Blue Whale and it didn’t turn out well.
- The principles of humane killing which cover the entire process from gathering through to killing is not just for farmed animals and for research animals. They apply or should apply to all animals including wildlife. I’m not naïve – standards that apply to cattle in a slaughterhouse are impractical on open range or in the open seas but if a process that is demonstrably inhumane can’t be improved on, then stop.
As we enter an anthropogenically-driven biodiversity crisis, the international focus on the Grindadráp is, I hope, indicative of an enduring change in public attitude. That is, a growing intolerance of the large scale killing of wildlife for whatever reason and wherever it takes place. There was, no doubt, some historical and existential rationale for much of this. But time moves on and attitudes change – tradition cannot be used to justify gross cruelty. It’s time to say ‘enough’.
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