Seal Hunt
by Roedy Green ©1999-2008 Canadian Mind Products
Introduction
The Canadian commercial seal hunt is a barbaric bloodlust ritual where baby
seals are beaten to death with spiked clubs and also skinned alive, all for no
economic benefit, motivated by sadism and an irrational hatred of seals.
I wrote this essay to counter the propaganda put out by the Canadian DFO (Department
of Fisheries and Oceans) that portrays the commercial seal hunt as
humane and economically important.
To claim that a baby seal does not feel extreme pain while being skinned alive,
does not pass the laugh test. Each year hundreds of thousands of seal pups are
sadistically slaughtered. Let’s look at some of the bogus claims of the
DFO.
“Seals need to be culled because of over population.”
There is no scientific data to support that claim. The DFO makes this
unsubstantiated claim in a vain effort to justify the slaughter. Seal
populations are a fraction of what they were before the commercial sealing
program began.
“Seals are killed humanely.”
Most seals are killed by being bashed oven the head with a spiked club. Others
are shot. Because a baby seal’s brain is only the size of a walnut, it is
extremely difficult to kill in one blow or shot. Many blows or bullets are
required to render a seal unconscious or dead. The DFO’s own studies have
shown that over 6,000 baby seals are skinned alive each year. A panel of
veterinarians gave a much higher estimate of 42% skinned alive.
If you seriously think spiked club is a humane way to kill, imagine the hue and
cry if that method were suggested to slaughter steers, execute criminals, put
down sick pets or euthanise the terminally ill.
“The commercial seal hunt bering important economic benefits.”
Strange as it sounds, the commercial seal hunt is not motivated by economics.
The seal hunt is not economically viable because the cost to conduct the hunt (ice
breaking, helicopters, administration, enforcement, etc.) exceeds the value of
the hunt itself. Furthermore, the income earned from the seal slaughter
typically makes up only 5% of a sealer’s income. As an industry, sealing
is insignificant, accounting for a scant 0.06% of Newfoundland’s gross
domestic product.
The commercial seal hunt has nothing to do with the subsistence sealing of the
Inuit of the far north.
The commercial hunt could not continue without being unwittingly subsidised by
the Canadian taxpayer.
“Seals eat too many fish, especially cod.”
Scientists have shown than 97% of a seal’s diet is fish other than cod,
many of these being predatory fish that feed on baby cod. If you take away the
seals you increase the number of predators which mean less cod. More seals have
always meant more cod.
Consider that 200 years ago, there was no commercial seal hunt. Seals were much
more plentiful than now, and the cod were so thick you “could walk across
their backs” according to contemporary accounts. The seal’s mild
predation is actually helpful to the cod. The seals preferentially eat the
sickest and weakest cod, which helps the overall health of the schools.
The true causes of cod stock depletion are overfishing and contamination of the
oceans. The seals had nothing to do with that. The seals managed for millions of
years without destroying the stocks.
“Much of the seal is utilitised.”
Only the skin and sometimes the penis is taken. The sealers sell the penises to
the Chinese who grind the baculum (penis bone) up for a impotence folk remedy.
The seal’s body is left to rot on the ice. Slaughtering seals serves one
primary purpose: fashion. Baby seal skins make high fashion garments. Seal oil
contains high concentrations of PCBs, DDT and mercury. It is not safe for
consumption.
“Seal populations are healthy.”
The DFO likes to point out that the seal populations are “three times what
they were in the 70s.” What they don’t tell you is that the
populations are still many times lower than they were before the commercial seal
hunt started, back when the seas were most productive.
“Sealing is an important tradition.”
The Canadian commercial sea hunt is the largest slaughter of marine mammals on
earth. Each spring hundreds of men carrying rifles or spiked clubs (hakapiks)
invade the harp and hooded seal nurseries, clubbing and shooting baby seals who
are barely weaned, and lay helpless on the ice. If this is a tradition, then the
majority of Canadians as well as the world community believe that is a brutal
and bloody tradition and should be ended. We have given up many other
traditional inhumane entertainments, such as scalping, bull baiting, cock fights,
whale sacrifice and dog fights.
This tradition hurts tourism, a far more important industry economically. People
in other countries naturally judge all Canadians as brutal thugs.
CBC Video
On 2008-04-16 the CBC aired an incredibly amateurish
and biased video on the seal hunt. It was like something some self indulgent pre-teens
would have slopped together. They mocked Sir Paul McCartney for making an error
in local geography and thereby implying he was too stupid to recognise
deliberate cruelty when he saw it. They showed Newfoundlanders whining that they
were misunderstood and it was just too cruel of the rest of the world to term
their hunt “barbaric”, but by any objective standard the hunt is
barbaric. Nobody would dream of killing cows or dogs that way! Asking the rest
of the world to look the other way is as silly as asking us to look the other
way to a nutcase who blinds horses with an icepick. Deliberately, needlessly and
maliciously torturing mammals is wrong. Their excuse is morally
equivalent to that of a pornographer of snuff videos who tried to excuse himself
because he liked the money. I don’t care how long they have been doing it
or how much money they make from it, or how many sexual jollies or warm fuzzies
they get from it. It is as wrong as slavery or human sacrifice, (similarly
justified on the lame grounds of tradition).
Motive For the Hunt
Since the hunt does not make money, you have to wonder what motivates so many
people, including bloodless bureaucrats, to perpetuate the hunt. Where have we
seen similar behaviour?
- Vice President Cheney drunkenly shooting hundreds of domesticated fowl.
- Soldiers raping children in Iraq.
- Drunks shooting cows.
- Bullies in school picking on the weak.
- Massacring the indigenous people of North America.
- As a teen, George Bush inserting firecrackers into frogs.
- Napalming children, burning them alive in Iraq, similarly burning them alive
with white phosphorous.
The hunt is a sort of manhood ritual. Men get a thrill, a twisted sadistic
sexual pleasure out of brutalising and killing the utterly defenseless. It is
nothing to be proud of. It is not an institution worth preserving. It is part of
our shameful barbaric past.
What do I want?
Ideally I would like the hunt stopped in its entirety.
Failing that, I want the clubbing of seals banned and skinning alive banned.
Failing that, all government subsidies for the hunt must end. It should totally
pay its way through seal killing licences.
Failing that a world wide ban on all seal products and ostracism of anyone who
uses or sells them. If the hunt is made too expensive to continue by taking away
all its financial backing, perhaps it will stop.
What Can You Do?
Visit the Sea Shepherd
Society for ideas on what you can do. You can participate in various seal
product boycotts, boycotting both the products and anyone who handles them.
Ask the government to stop the subsidy in any form for the seal hunt, including
the costs of regulation.
Write or email your
Member of the federal Canadian Parliament or any
other Member of Parliament or
Stephen
Harper (I can’t bear to call that homophobic bigot and Bush asskisser
the Prime Minister).
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
K1A 0A2
Fax: (613) 941-6900
It is best to hand write your letter. However in a pinch you can email:pm@pm.gc.ca
No postage is required to send a letter to any Member of Parliament. Only mail
sent to the House of Commons in Ottawa (that is, House of Commons, Ottawa,
Ontario, K1A 0A6) is eligible. Just write the letters O.H.M.S. where you would
normally put a stamp.
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