I think they mean feed stock animal fats not whales. When you eat that hamburger there’s a ton of left over animal fats. Given the animal is dead, the worst you could do is not use its remains in the most productive way possible. Otherwise why did it die?
The whale carcass was beginning to rot, which meant a massive stink. So they decided to blast it into pieces that could be eaten by seagulls... only that this plan failed and the chunks were too big.
It was not used much as food. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_oil only mentions margarine as an edible product. The rest are lubricants, lighting and soap.
From reading the article, it seems some of the whale products were waxy esters which I guess weren't digestible anyway.
Except cattle are herded and comercially farmed while whales aren't. I'd much rather eat beef, thank you. Your solution for whale meat demand offset is brilliant otherwise.
What is the problem? These whales are not near extinction like some whales outside Japan. The allowed quota for whales each year is strictly regulated by Norway which is one of the most environmental states in the world (yes we have lots of oil feel free to point out the double standard there). The killing itself is in most cases instant. If you care about how animals are treated you should be much more disgusted at how chicken are raised and their living conditions. The whale lives a happy life until it is killed.
We had whale regularly when I was a kid in Norway in the early 80's. Once a week maybe. It was basically used as a cheap beef substitute, exactly because there was always that extra taste to it that while it wasn't bad, wasn't exactly something you'd seek out. It was also tough and required a lot of extra work to tenderize it.
I think that at least in Norway whaling would have diminished further by now if the anti-whaling campaigns hadn't been so totally unsympathetic that it basically became a matter of national pride to keep it going - whale meat became less and less common to eat as the Norwegian economy grew and most people would just opt for beef anyway. Gently pushing for ever smaller quotas and stricter regulations instead would have suffocated the remaining industry quietly without most people even noticing.
That's a feature of commubism too. Soviet almost wiped out the whales because of such a thing. They didn't even eat the meat. Just killed the whales because there was a meat production goal.
The problem with whaling it's that whales are an important component of the ocean ecosystem, and killing most of the whales will have dire consequences. Cows and chickens are not part of the natural world and killing then to eat them has no effect other than ending an animal's life.
It's not about endangerment, it's about recognizing that the earth is a fragile system that we're pushing closer to the edge with every extinction. We have a responsibility to our descendants to take care of their planet for them until they can arrive.
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