Ethics Newsline®

REYKJAVIK, Iceland
Iceland’s parliament last week ordered the government to prepare plans for resuming whale hunting by the year 2000.

An Icelandic official told the Associated Press that the whales are unreasonably protected “for political reasons,” are not endangered, and a continued ban on whaling is threatening the nation’s fishing industry.

Iceland, which renounced its membership in the conservation-oriented International Whaling Commission (IWC) and has not signed the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, plans to export most of the whale meat that it harvests.

That plan, say critics, could jeopardize Iceland’s tourist economy and provoke retaliatory boycotts from countries that disagree with the whaling resumption, the Associated Press reported.