Low demand, high controversy prompts Iceland to end whaling by 2024

Iceland will end the practice of whaling by 2024 amid low demand and increased controversy, CNN reports.

“There are few justifications to authorize whale hunting beyond 2024,” Minister of Fisheries and Agriculture Svandís Svavarsdóttir wrote in an op-ed Friday.

Svandís wrote in the Morgunblaðið newspaper that demand for whale hunting has decreased significantly in recent years.

“Japan has been the largest buyer of [Icelandic] whale meat, but its consumption is declining year by year,” Svandís explained. “Why should Iceland take the risk of continuing fishing that has not yielded economic benefits, in order to sell a product that is in low demand?”

Svandís also noted the controversy that surrounds whale hunting, citing an instance years ago when U.S.-based Whole Foods placed a moratorium on marketing Icelandic products because of the country’s whaling practices.

The International Whaling Commission (IWC) banned commercial whaling in 1986, but Iceland continued a small “scientific whaling program” nonetheless.

Iceland left the IWC in 1992 and rejoined in 2002 after taking out a “reservation” against the 1986 embargo.

Commercial whaling resumed in Iceland in 2006 and was “furiously disputed by many countries angry at what they regarded as Iceland’s attempt to bypass international regulations,” according to nonprofit Whale and Dolphin Conservation.

More than 1,700 minke, fin and sei whales have been killed in the country since 1986.

No whaling has occurred in Iceland in 2019, 2020 or 2021.