END THE FAROE ISLANDS WHALE/DOLPHIN KILLING FESTIVAL

To: The Faroe Islands Prime Minister Kaj Leo Johannesen

During the summer months, inhabitants of the Faroe Islands - a group of islands under the sovereignty of Denmark, situated roughly halfway between Norway and Iceland - celebrate a cultural tradition called the grindadrap or the "grind," literally translated as “whale murder.”

Faroese whalers perpetrate the traditional butchery by surrounding entire pods of whales and dolphins with motor boats and driving them into the shallows -- where other residents are waiting for the kill. Disoriented, exhausted and terrified, the animals are forced to beach themselves. Reveling islanders use blunt-ended metal hooks to spear the whales’ blowholes and drag them up the beach. Then they murder the helpless animals with a knife cut to their major blood vessels.

During this summer’s cruel and unnecessary grind, Faroese residents slaughtered over 460 pilot whales.

Prime Minister Johannesen, it is already common knowledge that whales and dolphins are highly intelligent, socially complex, and peaceful marine mammals. Since 1982, the Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats has listed Cetaceans in Appendix II (List of strictly protected species) and in Appendix III (List of protected species).

There is no justification for killing them.

Each islander receives only about 22 pounds of whale meat a year for the slaughter to be convincingly rationalized as aboriginal subsistence whaling. Alarming levels of mercury, cadmium and other contaminants are found in whale and dolphin meat so it cannot pass EU health standards for human food, consequently, it cannot be exported. Much of the meat is dumped and left to rot.

The grindadrap continues exclusively for the sake of tradition.

As the Prime Minister of the Faroe Islands, you have the power to put an end to this barbaric tradition once and for all. We appeal to you to recognize the mounting international condemnation of the grindadrap, and to prohibit the slaughtering of dolphins and whales in the Faroe Islands.