policy letter
opposition for Faroese drive hunting
The American Cetacean Society, the oldest whale and dolphin conservation society in the world, urges you to stop the distribution by Rainbow Seafoods of fish from the Faroe Islands, the North Atlantic principality of Denmark.
The American Cetacean Society's mission is to protect all cetaceans, their environment and the marine ecosystems they inhabit. Because massive butchery is practiced in the Faroes in year-around "drive hunts" in which entire families of pilot whales, pregnant females and babies included, as well as other types of dolphins, are killed indiscriminately, it is important for corporations to disassociate themselves from such irresponsible and immoral killings. Several times each year, Faroese fishermen, from whom you purchase your product, drive the pilot whales and other dolphins into shallow bays, where they are butchered with lances, gaffes and long knives.
The drive hunt is a practice abandoned elsewhere many decades ago, and now outlawed by other European states. The inhabitants of the Faroe Islands have no subsistence need for whale meat, and much of the flesh is left to rot and dumped; it cannot be exported, as it is polluted with heavy metals and other toxins and therefore cannot meet EU heath standards for human food.
The five largest food distributors in Germany have suspended their seafood contracts with the Faroe Islands until the Faroese cease the mass slaughter of whales and dolphins. Please join with them and the food importers and chains joining the boycott of Faroese-caught fish. Rainbow Seafoods will gain much good will around the United States and the rest of the world by refusing to be part of barbaric and unnecessary killing of highly intelligent, social animals whose existence is threatened worldwide.
Respectfully,
Bonnie Gretz
American Cetacean Society
National Conservation Chair
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