Source: The High North publication, "The International Harpoon," July 3, 2000, published during the 52nd Annual Meeting of the International Whaling Commission held in Australia

In 1999, 220 animals from a live cargo of 800 cattle aboard the Kalymnian Express, en route from Australia to Indonesia, perished in a cyclone. In 1998 the Charolais Express hit heavy weather and 570 of a total of 1,200 animals died. In 1996, 1,592 cattle drowned when the Guernsey Express sank. The same year, 67,000 sheep died when the Uniceb sank en route to Jordan. The crew abandoned ship, but the sheep stayed aboard and either burned to death or drowned.

Still the Australian live animal export trade continues. 

It is no excuse for something bad to point at something worse. But any meaningful discussion on animal welfare must have its basis in the definition of standards. 

When whalers say that their hunts are humane, it is in comparison with what are seen as acceptable practices in hunts in other industrialised societies. All meat production inflicts some suffering on animals, or inhibits their natural behaviour. If one insists on comparing whaling with livestock farming, one should take animals’ entire life spans into account. 

When Australia accuses whalers of an inhumane practice, it must be willing to tell us the standards it applies in making this judgement. Once those standards are on the table, it should also re-examine its own practices, including live-animal shipments and kangaroo hunting, to ensure that the accuser does not become the accused. 

“It is of course, extremely difficult to compare the whales’ relatively short-lasting but intense pain, with the less intense form of un-pleasantness that occurs in animal husbandry. Personally I have no problem in carrying out such a comparison. My conclusion ... is that I would rather be a minke whale, living in freedom until the last few minutes of pain, than I would be ... a pig or a hen.” Peter Sandøe, philosopher and leader of the Danish State Ethical Council concerning Animals, Quoted in Dyrevennen, No 5, 1993.  

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