Physical pain perhaps - I'd imagine the herding onto the beach still involves a fair amount of terror for the poor beasts.
Also I'm not sure I buy the either/or rationalisation presented. No doubt there are other ways to provide enough calories that might even lead to new exports.
Thankfully most of the world views whaling as a shameful throwback to less enlightened times; I look forward to the days when the remaining holdouts see the light.
This is a very easy statement to make if you're not planning on providing any examples. I did. We can import the food. In my view, this is a worse solution than the current one.
If you have an idea for how to increase local Faroese food production enough to completely offset the energy obtained from whale meat, you should consider coming here to teach us.
I don't accept that every possible other option that the universe offers has been exhausted, which seems to be your position.
I'm not suggesting you drink the Gin to replace the calories in case this isn't clear - more exports would enable more imports.
We do, after all, kill other mammals for food which -if one can use such a word- intellectually are at least on par with the whale species hunted without much by way of outrage from the public.
So - what is so special about the whales?
(Full disclosure - Norwegian, we also hunt whales; while whale meat is by no means an everyday occurrence, I tend to eat it 4-5 times a year, which probably is above the national average)
Sentience would make me wary about hunting them, but as far as I can tell, no such claim has been made about minkes, which are the whales hunted locally.
The problem, by the way, with such an argument as you're presenting is basically that it leaves us to choose an arbitrary cutoff point. Which species are intelligent enough to warrant not being hunted for food? Why at that precise point? How about an unusually bright specimen of the first species deemed dumb enough to hunt?
Basically, the only safe conclusion would be to go vegan. (Which I can see valid arguments for, though they haven't as of yet convinced me.)