Will Obama Suspend the Commercial Whaling Ban?

Administration clashes with conservationists over controversial compromise

For centuries, whaling vessels relentlessly chased aquatic leviathans across the world’s oceans, hurling harpoons into the giants’ flesh so their corpses could be processed and sold for

meat, oil and perfume. Unchecked whale warfare ultimately pushed cetaceans to the brink of extinction, but they were pulled back by a global moratorium on commercial whale hunting declared in 1986.

While this international treaty is far from perfect (having since allowed the killing of 35,000 whales for “scientific” purposes), it did set an important precedent that recognized humanity’s ethical obligation to protect endangered species from the excesses of industrial exploitation. But now, the commercial whaling ban is in danger of being overturned in the name of saving whales from eventual obliteration—and it is the U.S. government that today stands at the helm directing this controversial course of action:  

  

U.S. Leads New Bid to Phase Out Whale Hunting

By JOHN M. BRODER, April 14, 2010

WASHINGTON — The United States is leading an effort by a handful of antiwhaling nations to broker an agreement that would limit and ultimately end whale hunting by Japan, Norway and Iceland, according to people involved with the negotiations.

The compromise deal, which has generated intense controversy within the 88-nation International Whaling Commission and among antiwhaling activists, would allow the three whaling countries to continue hunting whales for the next 10 years, although in reduced numbers. Read Full Story

Many whale species remain endangered, but President Obama apparently believes that the best way to save them in the long run is to legalize commercial whaling for a decade, and he will advocate for this agenda at the International Whaling Commission’s annual meeting in June. Unfortunately, neither the New York Times nor the Administration* explains exactly how this plan will realistically protect whales now and in the future. The proposal’s proponents claim that compromising the moratorium will end up saving thousands of whales from slaughter through enhanced enforcement mechanisms and buying negotiators time to secure a permanent hunting ban down the road, but they offer no guarantees that whaling nations will be forced to stop whaling after the decade is up.

Given the information vacuum trailing in the Administration’s wake, Obama’s plan seems more than a bit fishy to me, and leaves them vulnerable to valid criticism from concerned citizens who feel they’ve been shut out of the discussion. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), for instance, calls the government’s proposal “a whaler’s wish list” that would open the Antarctic Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary and North Pacific to Japanese whalers, and allow Norwegian and Icelandic whalers to continue violating scientifically-based conservation policies. IFAW also pointedly asserts that Obama’s proposal directly contradicts the promise he made during his candidacy to strengthen the international commercial whaling ban—not suspend it.

Will We Never Learn?

From shipping collisions and pollution to climate change and Navy sonar experiments, whale populations face graver threats today than ever before, and yet world leaders still refuse to take a strong stand for their preservation. If not now, then when will the international community forcefully confront whaling nations by shouting “enough already”? It’s the 21st century—and we should have stopped coddling this cruelly destructive industry decades ago.

Only a miniscule number of people actually work as whalers or consume whale meat, and yet somehow, society as a whole enables this tiny minority to decide whether or not whales will survive. Hunters obviously don’t care about the suffering of individual whales, or whether they eradicate any number of majestic and irreplaceable species, as long as they keep profiting from their deadly trade. Their bottom-line mentality is that they will continue slaughtering whales as long as there are whales left to slaughter—morality, sustainability and sanity be damned.

But is this attitude really so different from that held by the vast majority of Americans who refuse to stop eating meat, despite the suffering and death it brings to billions of animals a year and its role as the primary driver of global warming? No, not really. It is the same indifferent, shortsighted belief system rationalizing human domination over other species that is at the root of both behaviors—and will someday lead to our own annihilation if not reversed.

1) Call or email the White House and tell President Obama to reinforce rather than compromise the moratorium on commercial whaling.

2) Congress is currently considering a bill called the International Whale Conservation and Protection Act that would maintain and strengthen the commercial whaling ban and promote other worldwide cetacean protection efforts. Urge your elected officials in the House and Senate to co-sponsor and support this important bill.


* The White House website contains no mention of Obama’s position vis-à-vis commercial whaling, and their press agents have failed to return my phone and email inquiries as promised. This is the second time the White House has ignored my requests for information about their handling of animal protection issues: last month, a press officer personally assured me that someone would call me back the following day regarding the President’s position on shark finning for a post I was writing, but three weeks have now passed, and no one has responded.  

Here Comes the Sunstein!

Obama’s prospective “Regulatory Czar” will ban all use of animals…according to meat, dairy and egg industry hacks, that is

You may want to start unfurling those mothballed “Mission Accomplished!” banners and planning end-of-the-movement celebrations, because, after many long years of tireless effort to abolish humanity’s abuse of other species, we are finally and definitively about to win the war against animal exploitation! Apparently, the United States is on the very cusp of an unprecedented Golden Age of Animal Rights when meat products will completely disappear from supermarkets and be replaced by tofu imitations, fur salons will be transformed into hemp-and-pleather fashion boutiques, and vivisection laboratories will be converted into homeopathic apothecaries. It’s literally a vegan’s lifelong dream come true!

At least, that’s the radically compassionate world that animal enterprise apologists at the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) and the American Conservative Union (ACU) warn we’re headed for if Congress approves President Obama’s nefarious nomination of Cass Sunstein as ostensibly omnipotent Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA)*. Corporate propagandists are trying their damndest these days to demonize Sunstein, an accomplished attorney who befriended Obama when they were both professors at the University of Chicago Law School, primarily because he is a vegetarian and the co-author of Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions (among many other books). It is therefore not so surprising that Sunstein’s appointment was recently blocked (or at least delayed) per the objections of Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, who (erroneously) claimed the nominee “has said that animals ought to have the right to sue folks,” and worried that giving Sunstein regulatory oversight would affect “a number of other issues relative to agriculture,” which would surely rankle many of his key campaign contributors whose fortunes rise or fall with the value of beef, pork and poultry shares.

The root of Sen. Chambliss’ first concern is a quote from Sunstein’s aforementioned tome which reads: “[A]nimals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives, to prevent violations of current law … Any animals that are entitled to bring suit would be represented by (human) counsel, who would owe guardian like (sic) obligations and make decisions, subject to those obligations, on their clients’ behalf.” However, despite Chambliss’ unease, this statement (consistently taken out of context by Sunstein’s opponents) does not entail granting animals explicit rights under the law, as journalist Julian Sanchez explains: “Sunstein was suggesting that in order to enforce animal cruelty laws already on the books, private parties might be given standing to bring civil actions against those who violate these existing laws, rather than leaving it up to government prosecutors to investigate and make cases. Judges could order plaintiffs to pay defendants attorneys (sic) fees in order to deter frivolous suits.”

Put this way, Sunstein’s proposal sounds “very conventional and a little boring,” as the candidate himself noted during a May 12 confirmation hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee (which approved his nomination). To Chambliss’ credit, the Senator wants to hear Sunstein out in person before deciding whether to oppose or support his appointment. Sunstein will have an opportunity to more fully explain the meaning and implications of his views in a meeting with Chambliss and other Senators sometime this month.

However, some of Sunstein’s shriller detractors have already made up their “minds” about Sunstein, and are doing everything they can to make sure others see the horns they’ve so helpfully painted on his head. These masters of delusion also nonsensically insist that the relatively obscure post of OIRA Administrator wields a level of influence that vastly exceeds the authority of any other U.S. government official — up to and including the President. Here are some recent quotes that express the tenor and suppositions underlying the anti-confirmation viewpoint:

“Sunstein’s work could spell the end of animal agriculture, retail sales of meat and dairy foods, hunting and fishing, biomedical research, pet ownership, zoos and aquariums, traveling circuses, and countless other things Americans take for granted… Americans don’t realize that the next four years could be full of bizarre initiatives plucked from the wildest dreams of the animal-rights fringe. Think about every outrageous idea PETA and the Humane Society of the United States have ever had, and imagine them all having the force of federal law.”

– David Martosko, Director of Research, the Center for Consumer Freedom

“If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Sunstein will have unchecked power to severely limit or end hunting freedom and gun ownership in America. [...] Sunstein will have the power to write regulations dealing with the length of hunting seasons, Federal land use, deciding which species are ‘endangered,’ draconian noise and environmental standards at shooting ranges, taxes on guns and ammunition, gun shop and gun show regulations, federal record keeping on gun purchases… And on thousands of regulations dealing with meat processing, life-saving medical research that involves animal testing, animal ‘rights,’ and much more.”

– “Stop Sunstein” petition from the American Conservative Union

In the interest of journalistic objectivity, I should mention that I normally find such misguided critics infuriating, but today they just make me laugh because they’ve clearly gone over the deep end. I mean, yeah, the CCF’s whole reason for being is to shill for greedy corporations, and Sunstein is not the first Obama appointee opposed by the ACU, but the fact that these paranoid sociopaths seriously believe the OIRA Administrator has “unchecked power” to outlaw guns, hunting and meat is so ludicrously beyond even the remotest realm of possibility that it makes their shtick comedic gold. The only reasons to even pay the slightest bit of attention to such hyperbolic right wing idiocy are to revel in its unintended satirical value, and to make sure decision-makers understand how utterly moronic it is.

Perhaps I’m only snickering now because in the process of being so obviously on the defensive, the animal killers have inadvertently exposed their most vulnerable weak spots — mainly, their tendency to become irrational when their dominance is threatened. In reality, if Sunstein is appointed, society’s treatment of animals is not going to fundamentally change: the OIRA Administrator’s job is definitely not to create new laws, but to basically ensure that U.S. regulatory agencies (such as the EPA, USDA, etc.) comply with existing ones. At best, we can hope that Sunstein will hold these agencies accountable for breaking animal welfare statutes — which would be a first in U.S. history and something that could indeed significantly impact how animal exploitation industries operate. However, according to an Op-Ed by Greg Henderson, editor of the agribusiness journal Drovers, they’re much more worried about how Sunstein’s confirmation could allow pesky animal advocates to file so-called “nuisance suits” against factory farms:

“Sunstein’s views on animal rights could be disastrous for all of livestock agriculture, not because stockmen routinely abuse animals but because such legal remedies could be used by animal rights activists to initiate nuisance suits. Assuming current animal abuse laws remain the same, activists could successfully tie up livestock producers with legal procedures for years. And once the door is opened a crack to allow legal action by animals, it would only be a matter of time before the interpretation of abuse comes into question. For instance, are animals fed corn abused? Some animal rights advocates believe they are. What about cows living on the range without shelter? Are they abused if they don’t have access to a heated barn? Sunstein’s views represent those on the fringe now, but the actions we take now may determine if those views are mainstream in the future.”

While Henderson’s analysis is at least somewhat more pragmatic than that of his colleagues, it still reveals a fundamental distortion of perception. Take his claim that factory farms do not “routinely abuse animals” — it’s demonstrably false. Consider, for example, this small sampling of standard agribusiness practices, all of which are perfectly legal in the U.S. and used to enslave billions of animals a year:

• Battery cages
  
• Debeaking
  
• Tail docking
  
• Genetic manipulation
  
• Forced cannibalism
  
• Slaughter while still conscious

If you amputated half of your dog’s tail without anaesthetic or slashed your cat’s throat while she was wide awake, you would be rightly charged with animal abuse, but Henderson (like all “stockmen”) implies that farm animals are somehow subject to completely different physical laws than companion animals. Of course, his job as an agribusiness hustler is the same as the CCF’s and the ACU’s: to reframe the debate so that the concerns of animal advocates appear not as legitimate ethical arguments against torturing and killing billions of living beings for money, but rather mere quibbling over some “minor” discomforts animals endure in the course of their otherwise supposedly idyllic lives on factory farms. The best in the business do it unconsciously, automatically, crafting messages as though there were no other way of thinking about things — because they never do.

But this narrow-minded strategy won’t work forever because as people learn more about the routine cruelties animals suffer on modern farms, the more disgusted they become with those who perpetrate abuse and the less they believe their lies. It is inevitable that, in the coming years and decades, increasing numbers of people will undoubtedly see the truth — and that, over the long haul, animal advocates’ core values will become mainstream. Sunstein’s nomination is just one more sign that this is already happening, and one more crucial step in the right direction.

* The Senate confirmed Sunstein on September 10, 2009

President Obama Announces Downed Cattle Ban

Decision is a milestone victory for animal welfare and food safety

Today, President Barack Obama announced in his weekly video address that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will finally ban the slaughter of all downed cows for food. This is a major win for animal protection and consumer health advocates that has been in the making since the early 1990s, when organizations like Farm Sanctuary and HSUS started pushing the government to pass legislation prohibiting producers from dragging sick, crippled cattle to the killing floor for processing. Significantly, Obama took action on this important issue only 54 days into his still-young presidency, sending the message that he takes food safety and animal welfare seriously.

Elected and appointed officials must (or should) know by now that downed animals are far more likely than their ambulatory counterparts to carry diseases such as mad cow and bacteria like E. coli that can be fatal to humans who eat their meat. During one of the eight congressional hearings held last year following the largest beef recall in U.S. history, many of them would have also seen HSUS’s undercover video exposé showing workers at the Hallmark/Westland Meat Company packing plant in Chino, California abusing downed cows by ramming them with forklifts and shocking them with electric prods. Nevertheless, the USDA has allowed producers to process cattle who become downed after reaching the slaughterhouse since 2007. The ban Obama announced today will close this legal loophole by permanently prohibiting the slaughter of all downed cattle for food, no matter when they become disabled.

Animals typically become downers because of the way they are raised on factory farms: genetically bred for fast growth, crowded together or confined in cages or crates, mutilated without anesthetic, and fed garbage, the only reason that any factory farmed animals can actually walk to their own deaths is that they are routinely pumped up with non-therapeutic antibiotics. Because downed animals are already suffering greatly when they get to the slaughterhouse, current laws must be reformed to require timely euthanization of cattle deemed unfit for human consumption in order for the ban to actually prevent animals from lingering in pain. I assume that such a provision will be put in place (but cannot presently find any corroborating details), and that some kind of enforcement mechanisms will be implemented.

Political Prognostications and Appointees

In September 2008, I wrote a blog post analyzing Obama’s record on animal issues, concluding that he would be far more likely to support and promote animal causes than his opponent, Republican candidate John McCain, based on their respective legislative histories. In January, I wrote my monthly column for The Animal World magazine about Tom Vilsack, Obama’s appointee to Secretary of Agriculture, examining his public service career and speculating as to whether he would challenge Big Ag's mistreatment of animals. Well, it seems like the administration is on the right track so far: here’s hoping they keep up the momentum and accomplish even more for animals in the coming four years.

Secretary Vilsack called the downed cow ban "a step forward for both food safety and the standards for humane treatment of animals," which is a brave statement for someone in his position, given that most previous Secretaries of Agriculture have been unwilling to even acknowledge farm animal welfare as a legitimate concern for fear of blowback from powerful agribusiness interests. For his own part, President Obama also made some bold assertions in his video address. For example, after qualifying that "the United States is one of the safest places in the world to buy groceries at a supermarket," he called the nation’s food safety inspection system a "hazard to public health," noting that the annual number of contaminated food outbreaks in the U.S. today is more than triple what it was just 15 years ago.

Alerting viewers to the fact that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been so underfunded that it can only inspect about 5% of the nation’s food processing facilities every year, President Obama promised that his new pick for FDA Commissioner, Margaret Hamburg, will change all that — and start by hiring more inspectors. "Dr. Hamburg brings to this vital position not only a reputation of integrity," Obama said, "but a record of achievement in making Americans safer and more secure." There’s absolutely no question about it, Hamburg's résumé is impressive, so it’s not surprising that both public health advocates and food industry groups are praising the pick. According to Obama, the work of Hamburg and her Deputy Commissioner at the FDA, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, "will be part of a larger effort taken up by a new Food Safety Working Group" that will advise the president "on how we can upgrade our food safety laws for the 21st century; foster coordination throughout government; and ensure that we are not just designing laws that will keep the American people safe, but enforcing them."

Pigs: The Other Downed Animals

The downed animal ban announced by President Obama applies only to cattle, leaving downed pigs, sheep, goats, and other farm animals to suffer the cruelty inherent in dragging, pushing or otherwise coercing large animals onto the kill floor. Pigs are also known to carry transmissible diseases from which humans have died and approximately 100,000 downed pigs go to market each year, yet for the foreseeable future, these animals will continue to suffer cruelty while the pork-eating public remains at risk. And don’t forget that salmonella poisoning kills about 1,500 humans every year, and that approximately 15% of chickens sold in the U.S. are contaminated with salmonella.

People who eat meat must understand that as long as agribusiness corporations insist on treating animals like interchangeable biomachines instead of individual living creatures, meat will be swarming with bacteria from feces and other unsanitary substances that are part and parcel of the assembly-line factory farming system. That is, improvements in animal welfare and food safety are intimately connected — and you can’t have one without the other. So please, urge your legislators and President Obama to expand the downed animal ban so that it protects all farm animal species.