THE INTERNATIONAL Whaling Commission has rejected a request by Denmark for an increase in the number of whales that may be slaughtered in Greenland to meet the subsistence needs of indigenous Inuits.

An EU offer to amend Denmark’s proposal was declined, with the Danish delegation insisting its original proposal be voted on. It was then defeated by 34 votes to 25, with three abstensions at the commission’s meeting in Panama yesterday.

This followed revelations by the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society that whalemeat was being sold to tourists by restaurants in Greenland, a Danish overseas territory. A joint appeal by the society and the Animal Welfare Institute was heard in Panama.

Denmark was seeking to increase the number of endangered fin and humpback whales it kills for the subsistence needs of native people for the next six years. However, it failed to get any quota approved at all.

Criticism of Greenland was led by Latin American countries, which pointed out there was little difference between what Greenland was doing in feeding whales to tourists and that practised by commercial whaling operations.

Claims by Denmark that Greenland’s whalers could use baseball bats to kill whales if they wanted to did little to endear Greenland to the rest of the whaling commission, according to the International Whale and Dolphin Society.

It said the EU “struggled to come to a [common] position on the issue”. Eventually, after being lobbied extensively by the society, EU member states which shared its concerns forced an internal vote on the Danish proposal.

The society’s chief executive, Chris Butler-Stroud, said the EU “finally sent its own signal to Denmark that it needs to clean up the mess that is Greenlandic whaling, and that commercial sales to non-aboriginal peoples will not be tolerated”. There has been an international ban on commercial whaling since 1982.

South Korea has threatened to resume whaling for “scientific purposes”, but the whaling commission’s Greenland vote “may well give it pause for thought”, he said.