PETA Seeks to Defend the Rights of Performing Orcas at SeaWorld
An Orca performs at SeaWorld
In what may be the first Federal court case seeking rights for members of the animal species, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in San Diego charging SeaWorld with violating the 13th Amendment by capturing and enslaving killer whales. The animal rights group bases the complaint against the aquatic theme parks on the fact that the 13th Amendment prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude contains no language indicating that it applies solely to human beings.
The suit which was assembled over a period of eighteen months by Jeff Kerr, PETA’s general counsel, along with a five member legal team, lists five performing Orcas at SeaWorld’s parks in California and Florida – Tilikum, Katina, Corky, Kasatka and Ulises – as plaintiffs. Acting on behalf of the whales, as “next friends” are PETA and two former SeaWorld employees who have become activists opposing the captivity of marine mammals. In the admittedly unlikely event that PETA prevails in the case, SeaWorld would be required to release the whales into the custody of a legal guardian who would then place them in a “suitable habitat.”
In a statement released concurrent to the lawsuit’s filing, Ingrid Newkirk, the President of the Virginia-based non-profit stated, “All five of these Orcas were violently seized from the ocean and taken from their families as babies. They are denied freedom and everything else that is natural and important to them while kept in small concrete tanks and reduced to performing stupid tricks.”
Pamela Anderson promoting PETA's Save the Seals campaign
SeaWorld San Diego responded with its own statement saying PETA’s efforts to “extend the Thirteenth Amendment’s solemn protections beyond human beings is baseless and in many ways offensive.”
And indeed, the story has been reported with more than a hint of amusement, if not outright scorn. But PETA – which has undertaken any number of controversial actions in the past to defend animal rights – is not afraid to push the boundaries of taste and civility to attract the public’s attention to its campaigns. In 2003, it provoked the ire of the Anti-Defamation League for comparing the meat industry to the Holocaust. And last year, a PETA member threw a pie in the face of a Canadian government minister to protest seal hunting.
Controversy has worked most successfully for PETA in its provocative anti-fur and pro-vegan campaigns – especially its “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” promotion, which has enlisted celebrities like Pamela Anderson and basketball star Dennis Rodman to pose nude to put across their message. The Thirteenth Amendment is not as sexy as celebrity skin, but the coverage – whether amused or outraged – of this new battle has already presented the issue of captive whales to a whole new audience.
President Obama Seeks to Shore Up the IWC and to Protect the Minke Whale (sort of)
The killer whales at SeaWorld might prefer stupid tricks to tempting fate – and deep-sea fishermen – in the open seas around Iceland. The island nation – ordinarily so equitable and enlightened – continues to defy the worldwide ban on trade in whale products by openly selling meat from the Minke whale.
Minke whale surfacing in the sea off Iceland
The Minke whales are the second smallest Baleen whales – whales distinguished by having baleen i.e. vent-like plates for filtering food from water, rather than teeth. Mature Minkes are grayish-black in color and normally measure 23-24 feet (7m) in length, but can grow as large as 35 feet (11m) long and weigh up to 15 tons. Minkes typically live for 30 to 50 years; some have been known to live up to 60 years.
Theoretically, these whales should be protected from being slaughtered for export by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), a treaty that bans international commercial trade in whale products. But the staff at the “Inspired by Iceland” store in Keflavik Airport is openly selling packaged whale meat to tourists, under the false claim that the ban doesn’t apply to foreign-bought whale meat. Unfortunately, at least for the store’s salespeople, some of last month’s U.S. buyers of the whale meat steaks were representatives of the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) and the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS). Their mission was to expose the whale meat trade and in particular, drive home the point to Americans that transporting whale meat to the States makes them vulnerable to arrest and prosecution under several U.S. laws on illegal wildlife trade.
Minke whale being butchered
Stiff penalties for bringing whale products home from Iceland are also in effect for citizens of the European Union, as well as many other nations that ban international trade in whale products. Those nations do not, however, include Japan, which in addition to its own thriving whale fishing trade, imports tons of whale meat from Iceland and Norway. Japan has also been linked to pirate whaling through subsidiaries in Taiwan, the Philippines, Spain, South Korea, Chile and Peru. As with the issue of shark fin soup, the Japanese frame their defense against the international ban on whale meat trafficking as an attack on its longstanding cultural traditions, one based on emotion rather than reason.
In an effort to reinforce the IWC (International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling), President Obama last month directed his administration to take a series of actions against Iceland under the U.S. Pelly Amendment, but stopped short of imposing economic sanctions – this despite the fact that Iceland’s Minke whaling season is still ongoing. It remains to be seen whether Iceland will reform its whaling industry without economic incentives.
For centuries, Iceland’s economy rested almost exclusively on its fishing industry. In recent years, it also became known for inventive banking practices. That all changed with the global economic meltdown of 2008, when the country’s entire banking system experienced a catastrophic, systematic failure. After massive governmental intervention and a bailout by the International Monetary Fund, the banking system reformed and righted itself to a great extent. Now it falls to its fishing industry to show that it can do the same, without violating international conservation law.
