There's Nothing Classy About Eating A Whale, Pippa

We'll never know the whale whose life was taken so that Pippa Middleton, sister-in-law of wildlife advocate (and, you know, duke) Prince William, could write about its flavor.

"We dined on smoked whale carpaccio," Pippa blithely wrote in a Telegraph article on her trip to Norway. She added that the whale tasted "similar to smoked salmon but looks more like venison carpaccio." Maybe Pippa wouldn't have described her meal so benignly if she'd known that hunting minke whale is banned in most countries and tens of thousands of majestic and gentle whales have been killed since an international moratorium was put in place.

According to the non-profit organization Whale and Dolphin Conservation, there is no humane way to kill a whale at sea. Maybe Pippa would have thought twice about the supposed delicacy on her dish if she knew more about how whales are slaughtered ... with grenade harpoons. Grenade harpoons are what they sound like - sharp projectiles that are meant to explode when they enter the whale's body.

This apparently leads to relatively quicker deaths for the whales, but painlessness is really hit or miss when you're trying to kill the largest mammal on earth as he is swimming through ocean water. Whales can still take a long time to die, and sometimes, after being harpooned, they are shot with high-powered rifles.

"...It still beggars belief that anyone, let alone someone from a country like ours, where whale meat has long been banned, could be oblivious to the uproar over Norway's slaughter of these gentle giants," PETA UK exclaimed in exclusive comments to E! News.

Norway, Iceland and Japan are the only three countries in the world that defy an international ban on whaling, and 2014 was the deadliest year for Norwegian whales since the Norway began defying the ban in 1993. Learn what you can do to save whales in Norway here.