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[Kagus]

Because they engage in intermittent non-commercial subsistence whaling, that is heavily monitored and controlled by the government in order to maintain optimal standards of sustainability and animal welfare.

Or, according to Sea Shepherd, they ritually sacrifice critically endangered dolphins in order to fuel their inherent bloodlust.


But, thanks to advances in industrial dumping from developed countries, the pilot whales they actually hunt have gotten so contaminated with mercury that the Faroese people are slowly being poisoned by a world that's telling them to stop being savages and just eat McDonald's like real humans.

[Caz]

Same idiots who think hunting and eating invasive species with a rifle is evil while simultaneously choking down industrially-reared pork products.

[Kagus]

Same idiots who think hunting and eating invasive species with a rifle is evil while simultaneously choking down industrially-reared pork products.

There's been plenty of vegan hate as well, as they're naturally a popular target for PETA (especially seeing as they're such an obscure country, nobody knows better or bothers to fact-check). Pamela Anderson has specifically pleaded with the Faroese people to cease their senseless barbarism.

"Why can't you just eat vegetables?"

"Because we live on a collection of rocky, mountainous islands with frequent winds that can uproot fully-grown pine trees. You try growing something here."

[Caz]

There's been plenty of vegan hate as well, as they're naturally a popular target for PETA (especially seeing as they're such an obscure country, nobody knows better or bothers to fact-check). Pamela Anderson has specifically pleaded with the Faroese people to cease their senseless barbarism.

"Why can't you just eat vegetables?"

"Because we live on a collection of rocky, mountainous islands with frequent winds that can uproot fully-grown pine trees. You try growing something here."

Ah, yes. "Let them eat cake."

[GiglameshDespair]

Why do people not like Faroese people, I had not heard of this.

Wikipedia says they live on a island.

To put it in a less inflamed tone:

It's opposition to their hunting of the pilot whale (and a few types of dolphin, IIRC), where they drive whales onto a beach and pike them in the spine with a lance.

Lotta people don't like whale hunting in general, and turning the sea red with the blood of whales isn't good optics.

The Farose (Farosians?) have changed the laws around their whaling several times to try to make it more humane, the last time being in 2015 to enforce the use of the mønustingari, or spinal cord cutter. They do have a decent lot of laws forbidding unnecessary cruelty or suffering to the whales, and ideally the whales die in a very short time once their spine is cut. Some animal rights organisations and the like are against the hunt, calling it cruel:

The length of time it takes for a whale to die varies from a few seconds to a few minutes. Other observers complained that it took up to fifteen minutes for certain whales to die, they noted several cuts were sometimes made before a successful death and that some whales were not even killed properly until a vet finishes the job.

How accurate that is I'm not sure because I'm not so interested as to go and research it deeply.

The amount of mercury in the whale meat is high enough it's recommended it isn't eaten by adults more than once a month, and not eaten by women who are pregnant or intending.


...honestly, while I'm all for preserving traditional cultural methods of hunting, I'm also not really for hunting of whales in general, endangered or not ("probably not" for the pilot whale, but not enough data to be conclusive for the IUCN). There's not really arable land on the Faroe islands without some kind of major investment in greenhouses or something, and it's 30% of their meat produced, so is there too much of an alternative? More conventional fishing, I guess? They export a decent amount of fish they could otherwise eat, but they'd need something else to bring in money.

As Kagus might have given you an idea, PETA and the Sea Shepards are not a fan of the whale hunts.

[Dunamisdeos]

Oh, so it's the method involved in the whale hunting that makes them a specific target thereof, got it. I know PETA is basically against anyone killing an animal without being a member of PETA, and I am in agreement that whale hunting in general is a bad thing, but really based on where they live I can understand it being a necessity. Good to hear they take it seriously with regulation and such.

I was always under the impression that the clean severing of a spinal cord was one of the most humane ways possible to kill an animal.

[Rose]

Me: is about to travel halfway around the world to a town never been to to start a new job and hopefully Kickstart a better life.

My brain: Hey, while we're at it, let's start questioning everything about our own identity.

[Dunamisdeos]

Me: is about to travel halfway around the world to a town never been to to start a new job and hopefully Kickstart a better life.

My brain: Hey, while we're at it, let's start questioning everything about our own identity.

That sounds perfectly natural, after all our locale often becomes at least part of our identity.

[hector13]

You’re also moving to somewhere different. New start and that.

[Kagus]

Oh, so it's the method involved in the whale hunting that makes them a specific target thereof, got it. I know PETA is basically against anyone killing an animal without being a member of PETA, and I am in agreement that whale hunting in general is a bad thing, but really based on where they live I can understand it being a necessity. Good to hear they take it seriously with regulation and such.

I was always under the impression that the clean severing of a spinal cord was one of the most humane ways possible to kill an animal.

Yeah, it's the method and the fact that the pictures really do look pretty fuckin' metal, because blood turns into a massive drama queen once it hits water. The stabilizing hooks they use to keep the animal still enough to deliver a clean strike are blunt and so far as we know aren't painful. It's difficult to accurately measure those things though, as you can't exactly ask the whale (not technically a whale, actually) to describe the sensation.

The killing blows are administered by certified professionals who go through specific training to make sure that they can consistently deliver a precise, clean blow that immediately kills the animal and prevents overt suffering. It's still a viking-descendant attacking a cetacean with an axe, so... Again, it looks pretty goddamn brutal.


The animals are then butchered on the shore, and the meat is handed out to the population. It's illegal to sell the meat or any of its products (so that it's never commercialized and turned into an industry), so the cuts are just divided into shares for the community, with some people (usually relatives) taking over the delivery of cuts to elderly, handicapped or isolated citizens who couldn't make it to the event itself.

Goddamn Faroese even have free public transport... Fucking commies.

[TamerVirus]

Sooo.... what does whale taste like?

[ChairmanPoo]

Sooo.... what does whale taste like?

*tries to resist urge*


...

...

...

...


......


....
Like your mom!

[Rolan7]

Sooo.... what does whale taste like?

Snake, you're in a Russian jungle. Please focus.

[Kagus]

Sooo.... what does whale taste like?

Well, I had some served to me by my GF's grandma, who's a sweet old lady with a terrifying aptitude for knitting and a bad hip. Naturally, the food was boiled completely to death.

It's... Rather fishy. It's just dark, fishy meat. Because they push their fat stores to the blubber layer, the meat itself is extremely lean. Blubber, on the other hand, has a very delicate, nutty flavor and is quite tasty once you get past the rather odd texture. It's pure fat though, so it'll hit your stomach like an anvil.


Not my favorite, but I feel privileged to have gotten the chance to try it.

Snake, you're in a Russian jungle. Please focus.

Backpack. Backpack? Backpack. Backpack? Backpack? Backpack! Backpack.

[scourge728]

There's another level to the whale/dolphin slaughtering thing that no one appears to have brought up, that being they have rather high intelligence, including possibly some form of complex language, with possible understanding of grammar, which is rather rare among animals, meaning that it's quite close on that level to a discussion on slaughtering humans for meat (depending on exactly where they fall on that line, it could be human or ape level intelligence). At least some seem to be able to learn human language to an extent at least equal to chimps IIRC (This claim being based entirely on some book on animal cognition I read once, where apparently there was a... soviet I think? experiment involving locking a young male dolphin into a specially made area with a female human for I believe either near or actually 24/7 teaching them language, which ended when the dolphin became.... attracted to the human to the point where she.... to put it bluntly, gave the thing hand jobs to get it to pay attention)