[halgir]

I dislike Sea Shepherd as an organization, due to their distasteful methods (and personal bias, being a Faroese resident). But I spoke with several of their volunteers during one of their campaigns, and was pleased to realize that, as individuals, their hearts are mostly in the right place. Nearly all of them claimed to be vegan, which I feel does give you legitimate ethical grounds from which to criticize grindadráp.

However, if you don't oppose the general consumption of meat, I don't find the argument against grindadráp compelling. It yields more meat per killed animal than most, and the slaughter itself is arguably no less humane than most commercial meat production (not a high bar, I admit).

In terms of publicity, grindadráp suffers from being inherently more visible than commercial meat production. Personally, I think this is a positive thing. It confronts you with the fact that meat doesn't magically appear in a supermarket freezer - if you want to eat meat, then by definition a living animal has to die. The visibility of grindadráp has prompted conversations with my young son about where meat comes from, and the animal welfare consequences of eating it.

[kulahan]

Most animals these days are killed as efficiently as possible - a quick stun for chickens, a bolt through the skull for cows, etc.

The problem with commercial meat production is pretty much always the mega-farms that have them in horrible conditions during life. It's just cheaper, easier, and results in tastier meat to quickly perform the slaughter.

[NostraDavid]

Note that "religious meat" can be cruel for certain animals as well. Chickens are still a quick stun, IIRC, but cows are brutalized - they basically slowly drown in their own blood, because of the way they are slaughtered to be Halal.

And then companies try to push for more Halal meat, because there are fewer rules to account for, when it comes to Halal (great way for them to skirt the law, legally). The chicken supposedly tastes better, though.

[tengbretson]

Hogs are routinely slaughtered by asphyxiation in a room pumped full of co2. By comparison the dolphins are getting off easy.

[krn1p4n1c]

The high levels of mercury and other heavy metals doesn’t dissuade you from eating the meat?

[halgir]

It does. I eat small portions, rarely. My son has fortunately not expressed any interest in eating it, and I won't encourage him to.