I see your point, but I don't think culture and heritage is much of an excuse in this instance. (and as a minor point, the Faroe Islands have one of the highest GDP per capita in the world. This isn't by any definition a poor country)
The context of this article is the sheer scale of what happened, and the fact that even locals there aren't happy about it proves that point. If it's just done for the sake of tradition, I don't see how you can't just scale it way, way down, and limit it a handful of animals.
And while I have no moral qualms about eating meat, I think the very least we can expect is that animals are killed quickly and efficiently, which seems hard to ensure about this practice, as it needs people to be able to precisely attack the central nerve systems of animals.
And of course it goes without saying that just because I'm calling out this practice, I'm not ignoring how problematic our consumption of meat is. It's not good for the climate, we waste a ton of it, it's often done under horrible conditions -- outright illegal even -- , and that's not to mention how unhealthy eating red meat in particular even is. But I don't think that's directly connected to what happened here and I hope this event leads to some discussion in the Faroe Islands on how to balance tradition with the the need to avoid needless harm and torture for wild animals.
The GDP may be high but opportunities are still dominated by the fishing industry and a lot of young people still have to leave to diversify their opportunity.
It's not a dirt poor country but it's not a major international player. It's a small state with it's own culture, which by it's geography, has to be different to mainland Europe. I suppose, the point I was making, is that it is enjoys a novel outlook the cultural orthodoxy forced on the world from the white, English speaking Western world. Different enough that we should be careful about demanding what they can and can't do.
I agree, hopefully it is scaled down and it sounds like, under normal circumstances, it is a much smaller event but one that still provides for many families in a country still dominated by it's fishing industry. As in, they still have a very real connection to the sea and what it provides. I certainly wouldn't attempt to stop Inuit people from hunting whales, once I deemed they had enough food otherwise.
My connection between the negative effects on meat eating and this isolated incident is less about the direct comparison of methods and morals and more on the reaction these images produce.
A sea bathed in blood is a horrifying image but in reality it's an isolated event, rather than a regular way of hunting. A social media campaign demonizing people engaging in their heritage is not an effective way of getting a message across, yet this is what it feels like the reporting on this story generates.
Also, I could not possibly argue the counter point of our treatment of pigs and cows by someone defending this hunt, especially as I don't know the details of it's place in Faroe Island life. That's my worry, that it's easy to see an image and debase a foreign culture when I know equal or worse goes on at home. If I have a problem with colonialism then I might have a problem with how these kinds of cases are handled, despite my general abhorrence to the killing of whales and dolphins.
