According to BBC, Japan will continue to send out its whaling fleet and go ahead with its annual whale hunt. Fisheries Minister Michihiko Kano said that extra ships would be sent to escort the fleet against harassment from anti-whaling activists. Australia, which is challenging Japan’s whaling in the international court has condemn their decision to send out the fleet. There has been a ban on commercial whaling for 25 years, but Japan catches about 1,000 whales each year in what it says is a scientific research programme. Critics say it is commercial whaling in another guise as its fleet sails south to the Antarctic in the autumn each year, returning the following spring. But last year it returned early, citing safety concerns, after confrontations with an anti-whaling activist group that had followed the fleet south. The group, Sea Shepherd, has pledged to follow the fleet again this year and obstruct its hunt.
The particular issue that is being talked about in this article is if it right for Japan to be allowed to continue its whale hunting in the Antarctica. This is partly an issue on animal rights which is the idea that the most basic interests of non-human animals should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings. Is it right to allow the Japanese whaling crews to catch over 1000 whales a year to conduct research on? Conducting research on animals is a form of animal cruelty which is a violation of animal rights. Because of this, Australia is trying to prevent Japan from continuing its whaling in Antarctica by challenging in the international court. However, a verdict has not been reached yet and the Japanese have not been banned from whaling yet. But, if research on the whales is stopped, the possible new research that might have been able to be obtained if the research was not stopped would have been lost. But then again is the possible results obtained from the research worth the cruelty and pain caused to the whales? Who should be able to decide if the research can be done on the whales or not? And to what extent can the research be done on whales? There should be a limit on the amount of research that can be done on whales in order to prevent them from being tortured when being tested on.
This leads on to a greater issue of the ethics that are involved in this issue. Is it ethical to conduct research on animals such as whales? And as some people have doubt, are the Japanese really using the whales for scientific research or are they secretly using the whales as a source of food? Also, who should decide on the testing done on the whales? The Japanese should open up their research done on the whales to other countries in order to prove that the thousands of whales that have been caught are all being used for research and not being used as a source of food for the people as such an act has been banned. Many countries feel that whale hunting is an unethical thing to do and it has been banned for almost every country. However, if the research done on whales proves to be useful and the results allow us to find new information and advance even further, should the research be allowed? In my opinion, I think that if the research is done without violating any ethical guidelines and without any harm being caused to the whales, the Japanese should be allowed to continue their research on the whales. However, if the whales are harmed in any form or manner, I feel that the international court should immediately stop their research on the whales.
Personally, I feel that whale hunting should be banned as even though we might be able to gather new information from the research on whales, it is a very unethical thing to do and it results in animal cruelty which is a violation of the animal’s rights. A similar issue would be that governments are now considering placing tighter regulations on animal testing because of the expanding research that could cause new ethical issues. The placing of these regulations would allow researchers to conduct experiments on the animals without violating the animals rights as no harm would be caused to them, making the experiment ethical and allowing more research to be conducted.
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