Save the whales, collect the whole set

I notice the Federal Minister for an increasingly small section of the environment is unhappy with the IWC proposals for sustainable whaling.

I’m kind of amazed that the Japanese, Icelanders and Norwegians haven’t just told him to shut up or invade, but they are probably more diplomatic than me.

I guess they understand his foot stamping is for domestic consumption by the kind of folks who buy free range eggs, don’t wear fur and think whales and dolphins are people who live in the sea. The delicate kind who watched The Cove and say: “Those nasty Japanese, they are so cruel and heartless to be killing our whalie brothers and dolphinie sisters. We really should do something to civilise them”.

If you are one of these folks, I salute your humanity and despise your hypocrisy.

You see, our Japanese friends are just like us. They simply love exotic animals. They happen to think our kangaroos are just the sweetest folks and their little baby joeys are like pure sunshine in marsupial form. They are genuinely horrified by what we euphemistically call “culling”.

“Culling” is a word specifically designed to sanitize a practice too nasty to be spoken of directly - exterminating other animals that we feel are “in our way” so to speak. Its not a final solution, but it tides us over from year to year.

In friend kanga’s case, we don’t really want to eat him, we just don’t like the idea he might dare to eat the same grass as our sheep and cows

And don’t get me started on the sheep and cows. At least the noble kanga lives free, even if he dies with his brains scattered with a .303.

Mrs Cow is born a slave, raised in a feed lot, executed with a pneumatically inserted steel bolt to the head and then chopped up into little bite sized pieces. And we don’t kill kanga to protect her. We kill him so she gets fatter faster and we can kill her earlier.

On body counts there is no comparison between the few hundred whales and dolphins the Japanese and Nordics take a year and the wholesale slaughter of millions of animals both wild and domestic we commit every day.

And you know what? I’m not even sorry. I eat meat. I accept the only way I can is if, in places I don’t visit there are people who do things I don’t like to produce the quantities of chicken, lamb, pork and beef that sustains my life.

So, if you are a hard core vegan who only eats native plants and lives in a tent in the bush, pull up a chair. You’ve earned the right to lecture on these matters.

But if you eat meat, wear leather or wool, live on land that was once a part of the bush or a forest or eat grains grown on pasture land carved from the native habitat, then you are an end user of the slaughter. Make whatever kind of peace you like with your lifestyle, but leave the whalers to make peace with theirs.

What’s for tea?