BLUBBERING
WEDNESDAY'S Daily Express devoted the whole of its front page to a 'picture e xclusive' about the killing of pilot whales m the Faroe Islands. 'Blood on the beaches', said the headline, and the story began: 'Laughing children play on a beach stained with blood', and continued in the same style. The centre pages were devoted to the 'full dramatic story' of the 'slaughter of the innocents'. The Express did not eern to be suggesting that pilot whales were threatened with extinction by this klilhig, nor that the killing was purely wasteful — the Faroe Islanders eat the whale meat. Its argument was rather that the islanders are now rich enough to eat other meats and that pilot whales are trusting' creatures and have never attack- ed Faroe Islanders. The paper said: 'They [the islanders] call it tradition. The rest of the world calls is slaughter.' But is there ally essential difference between killing pilot whales and our own tradition of killing all sorts of 'trusting' and 'innocent' animals in order to eat them? In Britain, we do not often eat whale meat and so we wax sententious about it, just as we do when the French eat horses. How would we feel if reporters from the Faroe Daily Express (if there is one) descended on us and 'exposed' the horrifying scenes in our butchers' shops or indeed in the excellent restaurants in London much frequented by the Express's editor, Sir Larry Lamb? The most interesting part of the Express's story is a brief remark from a Faroe Islander. He explains that it is mercury poisoning from the industrial nations which now endangers the survival of the pilot whale.
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