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IWMC Slams Anti-Whaling Survey
Switzerland, 26 June 2001: IWMC - The World Conservation Trust today rejected the latest ‘survey’ by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) as unscientific, uninformed and unreliable. The President of the IWMC, Eugene Lapointe, said today that the survey, alleging eight out of ten Americans oppose whaling, "builds on misconceptions about whaling that they themselves have perpetuated to support their public fundraising efforts. It adds nothing to informed debate about whaling and achieves nothing of any scientific or statistical value to help progress the work of the International Whaling Commission (IWC)." "This survey is fundamentally flawed because it was paid for by a non-governmental organization that has a clear agenda of non-use of natural resources. Many people in America are generally uninformed about whales. To base a survey on the public’s lack of information serves only to contort and hide the truth. The results are therefore useless and irrelevant. These types of manipulative publicity stunts do nothing to break the current impasse at the IWC and in fact only serve to polarize the debate on whaling," Mr. Lapointe said. He said the IFAW survey contrasts with an April 1998 survey conducted by the polling company Responsive Management on the ‘Knowledge of Whales, Whaling and Opinions of Minke Whale Harvest among Residents of Australia, France, the United Kingdom and the United States’ where a majority of the public actually supported the consumptive use of whales once they were made aware of facts about their abundance. "The IFAW survey was extremely narrow and did not point out to respondents the actual numbers of whales and so gives a false impression of true public attitudes towards the harvest of minke whales," Mr. Lapointe said. Mr. Lapointe added that by referring to "voters" rather than "people", IFAW had inadvertently revealed its true purpose. "The expression 'voters' is obviously used to try to put pressure on President Bush ahead of his meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi in the United States next week. IFAW has set out to manufacture misinformation to influence thinking in Washington, DC." Mr. Lapointe added that this survey, "is the latest in a pattern of deceits. In the past, IFAW has been heavily criticized by the British Board of Advertising for false advertising, and has been characterized as a 'sophisticated con-artist' by a Canadian Court for misleading the public. It’s no wonder that the leading conservation group IUCN (The World Conservation Union) has twice rejected a bid by IFAW to become a member, in spite of massive lobbying efforts." "IFAW traditionally downgrades human needs and priorities in favor of animal rights while overlooking regional cultural traditions. Different cultures have different dietary patterns, with many utilizing food taken from the wild. IFAW simply assumes that it, and the U.S., should have the right to tell Japanese and Norwegian citizens to change their diets and cease consuming whale meat despite the fact that the species taken are abundant. This is western cultural imperialism at its most arrogant." "Moreover, IFAW’s reliability as the originator of polling data must
always be taken with a large pinch of salt. We should remember the infamous IFAW
poll conducted a few years ago that presented China as ‘a nation of animal
lovers’ of which 55.5 per cent knew of the existence and functions of CITES
(the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species). This was
extrapolated from a survey of just 1,738 residents of Beijing and Shanghai out
of a population of 1.3 billion rural, urban and nomadic citizens." For more information and
interviews contact: |
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