It's That Time Of Year Again

[lucious]

Nope, not Valentine's - Seal Clubbing!


On Robson street in Vancouver there's a petition being circulated about the Canadian Seal Hunt which is worse than ever due to government subsidies. This March and April 320,000 seals will be slaughtered. Protesters in the last few years have been arrested and their footage confiscated.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4851652.stm

- 98% of the animals killed are between 2 weeks to 3 months old.

- they are typically bludgeoned from a wooden club or a hakapik, many times hooked and dragged onto a boat, and sometimes skinned alive

- these animals are defenceless against attack

- veterinary reports conclude that: "Canada's commercial seal hunt results in considerable and unacceptable suffering.”

Year after year, IFAW hunt observers encounter seals that have been clubbed and left to suffer on the ice, bleeding profusely, crying, breathing and attempting to crawl.

"A sealer near us quickly clubbed every seal within a small radius to immobilize each of the pups, and then dragged the bodies to the center of his circle. One by one he flipped a seal on its back and skinned it. If the seal flipped around or fought against the skinning he'd flip it back to its stomach, club it several more times and then finish the skinning." -- IFAW Hunt Monitor



This site:

www.stopthesealhunt.ca

has an easy way to help. Just click TAKE ACTION and send a pre-written letter to Harper (or re-write it yourself). So easy. Let's evolve.


Here's another link for further information:

http://www.seashepherd.org/seals/seals_ ... facts.html

And, here are some companies to boycott (if you can afford them in the first place) that use seal products:

PRADA, Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci, Versace

[Ali Starfucker]

but i look so hot in my prada glasses.

[_uaioe]

wonk wonk wonk. The only reason anybody cares about killing seals is because they're CUTE. If you think it's for some other reason, you're a hippocrate and a liar.

From this article:

It was a good thing that there was an outcry in the early 1980s; and it was a good thing that there was a consequent European Union-wide ban on seal fur products. But that was when the cull had so reduced the populations of harp and hooded seals that they were at real risk. That was when they killed the little white baby seals as well, which particularly outraged our sentimental feelings.

The truth today is that there are now about 6 million of these seals, and they are not spending all the time lolling defencelessly on the ice. They are very efficient eaters of fish.

They eat 1.5 tonnes of fish a year each, and given that there are only 50,000 tonnes of cod left off Newfoundland and Labrador, you can see that the ecosystem is badly out of whack.

It is true that the waters have been crazily overfished by the Canadians themselves; but there seems to be good evidence that the voracity of the seals has created a predator trap, by which the fish find it impossible to breed faster than the seals can eat them.

You could find what looks like a more humane way of bumping off the seals, such as shooting them. The trouble is that this method is barely more humane than clubbing, and the gunshot lead is expensive and not environmentally friendly.

And surely it makes sense, given how poor these fishermen are, to prevent the pelts from being torn apart by bullets. You may feel affronted by the scale of the slaughter; but I can't really see a moral difference between authorising the killing of 10,000 seals and 350,000.

If it is really numbers of dead animals that shock you, let me remind you that every year we herd millions of cows and even more millions of sheep into the dark bellowing terror of dung-encrusted abattoirs, blap them with a bolt in the brain and then slit their throats. We don't have Canadian camera crews hovering above our meat processing plants.

[_uaioe]

Year after year, IFAW hunt observers encounter seals that have been clubbed and left to suffer on the ice, bleeding profusely, crying, breathing and attempting to crawl.

"A sealer near us quickly clubbed every seal within a small radius to immobilize each of the pups, and then dragged the bodies to the center of his circle. One by one he flipped a seal on its back and skinned it. If the seal flipped around or fought against the skinning he'd flip it back to its stomach, club it several more times and then finish the skinning." -- IFAW Hunt Monitor

Nice story. Good thing practices like that are 100% illegal.

- “Every person who strikes a seal with a club or hakapik shall strike the seal on the forehead until its skull has been crushed”;
- “No person shall commence to skin or bleed a seal until the seal is dead”;
- “[A] seal is dead when it has a glassy-eyed, staring appearance and exhibits no blinking reflex when its eye is touched while it is in a relaxed condition”;

[lucious]

First of all that Boris Johnson article is a complete joke. Nothing more than an editorial piece intended to get a laugh.

'The Canadian fisherman has as much right to go out clubbing as the average 18-year-old'

Clever.

And secondly, who do you think enforces those laws?


Conducting a slaughter over the course of 2 to 4 days (average duration, previous
years), which involves thousands and thousands of sealers that spread out
over hundreds of kilometers of ice looking for seal pups, with only a handful of
DFO Officers monitoring the sealers actions from the decks of Coast Guard vessels,
hundreds or thousands of meters away, does this sound adequately monitored
to you? (www.seashepherd.org)

We have the right to challenge our country's laws and traditions. This is evolution.

You know what - seals ARE cute. Thank God. It might help them in their case. I don't think it's unreasonable for people to look at a living creature and make the comparison - 'hmm, those look kind of like my dog's eyes...'
People watch this slaughter and it feels wrong to them, so they're trying to take responsibility as human beings to stop the unnecessary violence. It's not wrong to act on compassion.

Also, I personally do campaigning for caged chickens as well and let's face it, chickens aren't cute.

Tell me you're okay with sitting there and watching this video:

http://www.spike.com/video/2667866

[dancebaby]

cute or not, legal or illegal -- the practice of bludgeoning animals to death for the sake of material comfort/gain seems a bit cruel and barbaric.

in seoul, there's a street of dog-soup vendors and restaurants whose owners/cooks would very often beat the dogs to death to tenderize the meat. when you hear the dogs crying out in pain from being repeatedly and mercilessly struck by a blunt object, it's hard not to condemn the practice as brutish and savage.

if cows and chickens have to suffer the same sort of cruelty in order for us to have meat on our dinner tables, i guess i can call myself a hypocrite since i'm not a vegetarian -- although i'm doing my best to become one...

[lucious]

if cows and chickens have to suffer the same sort of cruelty in order for us to have meat on our dinner tables, i guess i can call myself a hypocrite since i'm not a vegetarian -- although i'm doing my best to become one...

Since most of us were raised meat-eaters, I think it's reasonable for people to refuse to give up eating meat. But small efforts help:
- buying free range chicken/eggs
- eating less red meat
- being informed about how our meat gets to us...
It's definitely a transition.

I'm currently watching this film Earthlings:

video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1282796533661048967

narrated by good old Joaquin.
I'm scared!

[altius]

And secondly, who do you think enforces those laws? We have the right to challenge our country's laws and traditions. This is evolution.

Through the cull, the harp seal population is maintained. It is a sustainable and healthy population.
Last year, an estimated 15million children died of starvation per year.
It is estimated that 800million people are starving.
You are totally right; let's evolve. Let us stop clubbing seals and start clubbing humans.
Won't someone please think of the children!!

[dancebaby]

Through the cull, the harp seal population is maintained.

if the purpose of killing seals is indeed for population control or wildlife management, why kill them with such savagery and brute force?

It is a sustainable and healthy population.

do you know this with certitude? just wondering...

Last year, an estimated 15million children died of starvation per year.
It is estimated that 800million people are starving.
You are totally right; let's evolve. Let us stop clubbing seals and start clubbing humans.
Won't someone please think of the children!!

agreed. but surely our responsibility & sense of charity can be directed towards both human beings and other forms of life.

[lucious]

And secondly, who do you think enforces those laws? We have the right to challenge our country's laws and traditions. This is evolution.

Through the cull, the harp seal population is maintained. It is a sustainable and healthy population.
Last year, an estimated 15million children died of starvation per year.
It is estimated that 800million people are starving.
You are totally right; let's evolve. Let us stop clubbing seals and start clubbing humans.
Won't someone please think of the children!!

During the 3-year period of 2003-2005, the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) allowed a kill quota of 975,000 baby and adult harp seals and 30,000 adult hood seals.

In 2004, 365,971 seals were slaughtered, and during the 2003 season 283,497 harp seals were killed. In 2002, the sealers slaughtered over 312,000 although the kill quota was set at 275,000. There were no legal consequences for the quota overkill. Instead, the Canadian government rewarded the kill quota violations with an incredible increase of 75,000 seals!

There is no scientific justification for these quotas as the seal counting techniques used amount to little more than guesswork. Further, Canadian author and naturalist (and Sea Shepherd International Chairman), Farley Mowat, estimates that for every seal landed, another is shot and lost under the ice, not to be included in the count. According to the Canadian government, the hunt will not harm seal populations, however, the facts dispute their unfounded claim. When the first European explorers landed on the East coast of Canada, there were an estimated 30 million harp, hood, and gray seals (harp seals made-up 80%, or 24M, of that number). Because of the reckless management of the hunt in the past, Canada allowed the number of harp seals to drop to 1.8 million in the early 1970s. Now they claim that a "healthy" population of 5.2 million exists but in the same breath admit that they have not had a peer-reviewed population survey since 1999. They predict that the anticipated survey's population number will be lower than their current claim, and further, their "management" plan still allows for the numbers to drop far below the 1970s level.
Scientists and environmentalists dispute the Canadian government's population claims, and believe the hunt is a threat to the survival of the species. In the last four years alone, over a million harp seals have been killed. While the world waits for a new population survey, seals are wantonly slaughtered.

Clearly, the government of Canada is willing to sacrifice everything (from their national reputation, to the wrath of the taxpayers, to economic hardship from boycotts) to continue their seal hunt which is nothing more than a make-work project for out-of-work fishermen.

After decades of this mismanagement and the resulting collapse of the East coast cod industry, the Canadian DFO has declared war on the seals in hopes that massive seal kills will bring back the cod and keep their disgruntled fishermen working. In fact, cod is not a major food source of the harp and hood seal diet. Further, recent evidence suggests that killing seals contributes to bacterial infestation on the ocean floor which leads to hypoxia, a condition in which patches of ocean lose all the dissolved oxygen and are unable to sustain cod or fish or marine life of any kind. However, these facts seem to have been brushed aside by the DFO in their efforts to justify and continue the slaughter.

(www.seashepherd.org)

...Reading your post makes me feel like I'm being clubbed, then taken for a ride in an erratic, short-circuiting elevator.

[altius]

Through the cull, the harp seal population is maintained.

if the purpose of killing seals is indeed for population control or wildlife management, why kill them with such savagery and brute force?

Blunt force trauma to back of the head is considered the most humane way of killing an animal (other than pentoparbitol injection, but pentobarbitol is toxic which means the meat cannot be used afterwards). Brute force is usually the method of slaughter.
The preferred tool for seal hunting is usually not a baseball bat; it is a hakapik (like a really big hammer), which is very effective for killing the young animal in a single blow. It is much more humane that shooting the animal, which frequently leaves the animal alive, and then it runs the risk of escaping and dying for no reason.

It is a sustainable and healthy population.

do you know this with certitude? just wondering...

In 2002, it was a rather large debate expanding over several weeks of discussion on CBC radio. At the time, with the increase in temperature, decrease in predation and moratorium on cod fishing, by 1995 the seal population grew to 3 times its 1975 numbers. Some people were saying that the increase in seals were the cause of the decreasing cod numbers, but most experts agree that cod simply is not a primary food source for the harp seal, so this could be unfair assertion. With the increase in the seal population, many out of work fishermen were given some work.

The preference is to cull the younger seals, which maintains a healthy active breeding population. This is admittedly when the seals are the cutest, and killing the younger animals somehow seems more cruel. However, this ensures that the breeding population is maintained, and thus maintaining an sustainable population. With a life span of 30 years or more, the harp seal will have opportunities to replace itself.

Last year, an estimated 15million children died of starvation per year.
It is estimated that 800million people are starving.
You are totally right; let's evolve. Let us stop clubbing seals and start clubbing humans.
Won't someone please think of the children!!

agreed. but surely our responsibility & sense of charity can be directed towards both human beings and other forms of life.

I would not choose to kill seal. It is my personal ethical standpoint that the cull is unnecessary, but it is engrained into Canadian culture and has been an integral part of the Newfoundland economy since the late 1700s. I understand why the Canadian government is reluctant to give up the seal hunt. The problems tend to rise from the fact that the seals are not being killed humanely. This is what happens when a cod fisherman takes up seal hunting in order to feed their family. Activists want the hunt to be stopped but that does nothing to resolve the issues driving the hunt in the first place.
While it is true and sad that almost 2 million seals have been killed (mostly) for the sake of vanity in the last 5 years, yet in that same time period, 75 million children have died slowly, more out of neglect than anything. In light of these figures, I find it ironic how animal activists call the seal hunt "inhumane".

[dancebaby]

^^^
an interesting debate with credible and persuasive arguments on all sides.

[lucious]

I find it mind-blowing that you are trying to instill guilt in people who stand up for animal rights, insinuating that we have no compassion for starving children ! Are you kidding, dude? It's a good bet that the people who are more conscious of animal rights are also on board for the fair treatment of all living things. How about instead of trying to stand in the way of people trying to help animals, you go out and help the children who these cruel animal rights activists are neglecting?

I notice that you totally ignored all the information in my above post. This isn't a cultural issue. This isn't an issue of keeping the numbers of cod up or the seal population down - it's a matter of MONEY. The poor fisherman were 'given' work?? What they were given is not theirs to take. Like the rest of us, these people have many other options as to how to make money, and I'm guessing they might have some other skills besides bludgeoning. Many people in the East move to Alberta to make money.

Canadian seal products have been banned in Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, Croatia, the US, and Mexico because these countries have revised the method in which they are slaughtered and have come to the decision that it is simply unacceptable. So then why does Canada, a country that is supposedly more morally sound than many others, continue to instigate this?

Also, if you watch the video, your 'one blow' humane kill theory will be pretty much put to rest.

How would you like to be humanely bludgeoned to death with a hakapik?

[captainjerbear]

as long as i am bludgeoned to death humanely, then where's the problem. they do that kinda thing in the middle east to people. maybe we should trade fisherman for jihadist's, and other people from that region to do the clubbing for the fisherman.

Keep in mind that species, with out humans around, animals have a way of controlling their own population.

So if the seals were killed in a humane way, the question lies, would u support the seal cull, or is animal population control wrong?

[gregsaint]

The solution: Seal Birth Control! It can't be that hard to teach bull seals to use a condom. The Catholics might object though.