In Feroe, the whale is not eatable any more
By Denis Delbecq • December 1st, 2008 in 13:24 · Category: Actuality
Will the whales of the Arctic be saved from the men by pollution? While the hunt for Cetaceas is perpetuated on islands Feroe (Denmarks), the health authorities recommended to classify the pilot whales as inappropriate to the human consumption, because of the high content of their meat of mercury, PCB (1) and diverted from DDT (2).
The first scientific results on the pollution of the population of islands Feroe go back up in more than ten years. In 1997, a long study of ten years and carrying on a thousand couples mother-child had shown a high level of contaminating and revealed their effect on the development of the children: disturbance of the neurological development of foetuses and of children, hypertension, illness of more frequent Parkinson, etc.
The health authorities of Feroe had then asked the pregnant women, the women planning to make a child and to those who nurse to cease using whale's meat. A call which had been heard since four years later, the level of pollution of the pregnant women had fallen. (3) Every year, several hundred pilot whales are killed by the fishermen of the archipelago (according to authorities)
It is obviously the results of the study, which has continued since 1987, which led this time to recommend in the whole population to cease eating whale's meat and use the grease, where pollutants are concentrated. Naturally, pollution does not come from islands Feroe them - even. The mercury is notably issued by the power stations which burn some coal and some oil and spreads on the whole planet, so as to pollute the whole Arctic region. In the oceans, the marine mammals which are in the top of the food chain, as the pilot whale, show contents the highest in contaminating (mercury, PCB, etc.).
In 2005, the Programme of the UNO for environment (PNUE) had published a long report on the mercury, its toxicity and its sources of broadcasting in nature (available in French). He classifies many jobs on the pollution of the populations which use some meat of cétacé (Greenland, Japan, etc.)
(1) polychloro biphenyle
(2) A pesticide from which usage was banned in many countries.
(3) Read in this respect, in English, an interview of Impalement Weithe, one of the authors of these jobs, which remontre in 2007. To note that he is not opposed to the tradition of whaling of islands Feroe. You can also see the documentary of 14 minutes of the English-speaking chain PBS this interview of which is drawn.
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