It`s nothing to do with Canada, it`s to do about rich old c-words who think that it`s hip and cool to wear animal skins as clothing. It is also the bible`s fault for declaring that a god gave man dominion over all living creatures. It is also mankind`s fault by following their respective religions teachings blindly and hypocritically by choosing the path of greed (greed is a sin in most religious texts).

Reply

Also, anyone who opposes the seal hunt should also oppose the dairy industry. It would be hypocritical no to. Baby cows get killed daily by the thousands. Who gets blamed for that?

Reply

I consider the seal hunt an abomination and embarrassment to my country, but you do the cause a disservice showing old pictures of baby whitecoat seals. Because of their inherent cuteness, whitecoat seal hunting was banned in 1987. However, As the CBC writes:

"You'd never know that from some of the anti-sealing groups that still prominently display pictures of whitecoats on their websites and in fundraising materials. One site even features a downloadable video of people hugging whitecoats. The reality is that whitecoats can't be hunted anymore.

It's also true that young harp seals lose their white coats (and their protection) at about 12 to 14 days of age. After that, they're fair game for hunters, although they're usually about 25 days old before they're hunted. Most harp seals taken are under the age of three months. Young yes, whitecoats no."

Reply

I mean, how can sealers still be allowed to:

* "hunt" a couple hundred thousand baby seals..............

More cows and chickens are killed everyday than there are seals killed during the entire sealing season.

* use a club like a caveman (i.e. hit them with a big blunt stick).............................

Rifles are used more that the hakapik.

* strip the skins off their painfully still-breathing bodies.

This is false. If the sealers were to do this, it would destroy the pelt.

* sell each pelt for a rocking $30 -- Canadian dollars, to add insult to injury!

$30.00 per pelt is a lot of money to a family when they need food clothing and warmth. Also there are many spin off jobs from the seal hunt that many non fishermen desperately need.

Has for peta going after the winter Olympics, thats great, because by doing this they have turned off many Canadians and if the seal hunt is ever stopped, it's the Canadian citizens who are going to do it, not a bunch of people from another country who as no idea of what it takes to live in Atlantic Canada..

Reply

From your post:
"strip the skins off their painfully still-breathing bodies"

You're kidding me, right? I can't believe anyone is still gullible enough to believe this. Skinning a live seal would be impractical, time-consuming and, yes, very bad optics in view of the anti-sealing protesters who follow sealers on the hunt, cameras at the ready. I defy you to find, let alone photograph, a single sealer who would be able to keep a grip on a wet, slippery seal long enough to skin it with sufficient dexterity to preserve the pelt in saleable condition.

Contrary to what you seem to believe, sealers aren't out on the ice killing seals for fun. This is how they make their living. They make sure the seal is dead from the hakapik (club) blow or rifle shot because it would take far too much time and effort to skin a seal alive.

I can appreciate that you're trying to make the world a better place, but propagating baseless claims under the guise of "truth" is not the way to do it. Try harder to understand a situation before jumping to preposterous conclusions and dragging your readers with you.

Reply

Favorite arguments of Seal killers and their supporters:

"Seals eat all the fish"

Less than 3% of a harp seal's diet consists of commercially fished cod and other food fish. Harp seals consume the significant predators of cod, including skate and squid. Removing harp seals means an increase in cod predators and that means the fish that the East Coast depended on will never recover.

The Canadian government itself clearly states that killing harp seals will not help fish stocks recover, and killing seals will in fact impede the recovery of ground fish stocks.
It was the corrupt Canadian DFO that exterminated the vast stocks of cod, haddock, whiting and plaice and their nurseries by 1992 with their factory trawlers and draggers out of sheer greed, putting a hundred thousand East Coasters out of work.

"sealers depend on the massacre for their income"

Even in Newfoundland, where 90% of sealers live, income from sealing accounts for less than one-tenth of 1% of the province's economy. Sealers are fishermen who engage in several fisheries throughout the year, and sealing revenues account for only about one twentieth of their total incomes.
The total revenue from this horrific off season massacre brought in a pitiful $6 million last year after expenses, while costing Canadian taxpayers over $30 million in subsidies for government offices, overseas pr junkets, Coast guard ships, etc. The government also had to step in to buy up tons of rotting flesh that couldn't be sold. Another indirect subsidy for the taxpayers is the few opportunistic thugs who do this, some from the cities, are collecting welfare checks the rest of the year instead of working their seasonal jobs. Boycotts of Canadian fish products totalled half a billion dollars, including snow crab, the mainstay of Newfoundland.

Fully 95% of the harp seals killed over the past five years have been under three months of age. At the time of slaughter, many of these defenseless pups had not yet eaten their first solid food or taken their first swim—they literally had no escape from the "hunters." Video evidence clearly shows sealers routinely dragging conscious pups across the ice with boathooks, shooting seals and leaving them to suffer in agony, and even skinning seals alive. In A report by veterinary experts concluded that in 42% of the cases they examined, the seal did not show enough evidence of cranial injury to even guarantee unconsciousness at the time of skinning.

Over the past three years, nearly a million seal pups have been slaughtered for their fur. The last time sealers killed this many seals—in the 1950s and '60s—the harp seal population was quickly reduced by as much as two thirds. Global warming is compounding the situation. In 2007, the Government of Canada continued with the seal hunt despite estimates by Canadian government scientists that as many as 90 percent of the seal pups in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence died because of poor ice conditions. Scientists around the world have condemned the Canadian government's so called "management plan" for harp seals as reckless, unsustainable, and irresponsible.

Reply

How to "humanely" kill seal?
By dropping a nuclear bomb over the arctic?
By launching pogroms or death fatwas on them?
By randomly shooting at them for fun or "to express one's rage" ?

Come on, stop the hypocrisy! The bottom line is that PETA want us to all go vege and stop what they call the exploitation (Guide dogs included!) of animals.

While it might be hip and cool to follow PETA's rule in our western rich world, how do you expect people living in desertic area (where it's really hard to grow vegetables and fruits) to go vege? Are you going to ship over carrots and tomatoes ?

Plus I'd like to remind you that plants are living creatures too (that are not cute, or cannot speak tough), so I guess pills are our last resort, right?

And finally what about the lioness who hunts antelopes, are you going to do sit-ins in the savanna to urge Mr and Ms Lion to stop their inhumane killings of poor antelopes?

That felt good.

Reply