Posted on 04/13/2006 5:03:11 AM PDT by Clive
Seal flippers were selling like hotcakes on the St. John's waterfront last week.
"They couldn't keep them," says Joe Walsh, editorial page editor of The Telegram. "There were people who've never tried seal meat lining up for them."
Contrary to what the animal rights people would have you believe, seals are killed not only for their pelts but for their oil and their meat -- about 60% of the meat is used.
In fact, seal flippers are so popular in Newfoundland that service clubs hold annual "flipper dinners," says Walsh, adding: "I bought three dozen myself last year. I eat two at a time."
Telegram reporter Barb Sweet says the media circus surrounding this year's hunt -- highlighted by Paul McCartney's Blubber Soul Tour of the ice floes last month -- has made Newfoundlanders so angry that even people who aren't "pro-hunt" are rallying behind the industry.
"Whatever their views are, for or against the hunt or in between, people are impassioned about all the misinformation that's been spread about Newfoundland," Sweet said yesterday.
In other words, the shame campaign led by Sir Paul and the Humane Society of the United States has not only failed to change the minds of Islanders about the seal hunt, but has made them more stubbornly entrenched than ever.
But then, the activists don't care about local sensibilities -- their approach is to demand the federal government step in and impose a solution on all the little people. It's a typically socialist, elitist view.
And the result? Yesterday was the start of the major seal hunt off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, which is expected to cull 234,000 young harp seals. Same quota as before Sir Paul hit the ice and no plans to reduce the slaughter. No wonder Newfoundlanders figure the whole thing is just a stunt to raise money for groups like the humane society. These people can't be serious, can they?
But of course they are -- and they keep sharing the same lies, statistical half-truths and outdated video footage with millions of supporters worldwide.
The most dehumanizing tactic used by the "humane" activists is to pile up economic data to argue that ending the hunt would have no real financial impact on the people engaged in it.
They literally make the individual fishermen disappear in a sea of numbers.
In a scolding letter responding to my "Blubber Soul" column last month, Rebecca Aldworth, the Humane Society of the U.S. director who organized the McCartney visit (and who was herself banned from the ice this season after allegedly getting too close to hunters), quoted me "the facts" about the hunt's economic significance.
"The seal hunt ... accounts for about 2% of the value of Newfoundland's fishery, and less than half of 1% of the GDP of Newfoundland. The Newfoundland government estimates there are about 4,000 active sealers in any given year -- less than 1% of the Newfoundland public ... If you do the math, those sealers would have taken home about $1,500 each after their costs ..." Aldworth went on to point out how comparatively wealthy Atlantic commercial fishermen have become.
"While this picture may not gel with your rather romanticized view of the supposedly impoverished rural life in Newfoundland, it is fact," she wrote.
On the ground in St. John's, Joe Walsh tells it different. He says the seal hunt can represent up to one-third of an inshore fisherman's income.
"One of the guys I know only makes $25,000 a year -- not much money. And historically they go sealing and use a lot of the money they get from sealing to gear up for the actual fishing season. So it's a very important income."
That's the reality of the seal hunt that the activists don't want to acknowledge.
And it's an example of why their stepped-up "awareness" campaign has naturally backfired -- and why seal flippers are selling like hotcakes in St. John's.
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Okay, a new phrase has been added to my vocabulary. I've been to pancake breakfasts, spaghetti dinners, pot pie dinners, ham dinners, turkey dinners, corned beef & cabbage dinners etc, but that's a new one.
I can understand how they feel about the activists.
I don't smoke, and I feel the same way about the anti-smoking activists.
Mark
Title: Seal Flipper Pie
Yield: 1 Servings
Ingredients
3 seal flippers
1 very thin slices of fatback
1 pork
2 inches of water
5 onions, sliced
2 cn beef stock or
3 oxo cubes in
2 c water
2 ts savory
2 ts worcestershire sauce
1 carrot
1 parsnip
1 turnip
1 potatoes
1 flour to thicken
1 crust:
3 c flour
6 ts baking powder
1/4 ts salt
1/4 lb margarine
1 1/2 c milk
Instructions
Note: Skinned turres (a seabird, also known as murres) preboiled for
25 minutes in plain water, may be substituted.
1. Meticulously remove all fat from 3 seal flippers
2. Cover bottom of heavy skillet with very thin slices of fatback
pork.
3. Render the fat, then sear the well-seasoned flippers.
4. To a roasting pan add: 2 inches of water (5 cm if using metric
flippers (sic? measure); 4-5 onions, sliced; 2 cans beef stock or 3
Oxo cubes in 2 cups water; 1 - 2 teaspoons savory; 1 - 2 teaspoons
Worcestershire sauce
5. Add flippers, fatback and cook UNCOVERED for about 1 1/2 hours at
325 degrees F. At this stage the meat should be tender and the bones
can be removed if desired. Add carrot, parsnip, turnip or whatever
plus more water if required; cook an additional 20 minutes. Add
potatoes and cook a further 20 minutes or so. Add flour to thicken.
Crust: 3 cups flour 6 teaspoons baking powder 1/4 teaspoon salt Cut
in 1/4 lb. margarine, rub through fingers until stage of fine crumbs
then add 1 1/2 cups milk. Mix with spoon/hands, roll lightly, cover
flippers etc. in pan or dish. Cook at 375-400 degrees F until browned
(about 20 minutes).
Recommended wine: London Dock (an overproof dark rum). Newfie Screech
may be substituted.
From Mary O'Driscoll, St. John's, New Foundland
From: bourget@netcom.com (Anne Bourget)
How much meat can be on the flippers? Wouldn't a chunky seal rump roast taste better?
Yet another reason to beware of HSUS
Yum, flipper dinner with a side order of cod tongues.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, I'm getting hungry for a *Seal Flipper Pie* for breakfast, m.
ROTFLMAO! Where did you ever find that recipe? Just hilarious.
I'm liking that London Dock run, though. Make it a double!
Cod - the fish - have tongues? Whodathunkit?
The London Dock sounds OK, but I'm not sure about the Newfie screech. I don't know for sure what it is, but I have a hunch no taxes are paid on it, if you get my drift.
Spicy cod tongues with boiled potaoes and cauliflower
Or how about some nice cod cheeks...
Elegantly prepared...
does fried okra come as a side?
Better a Newfie ba$tard than a mainlander. Those that want to protect the baby seals should visit some outports and see the actual conditions in Newfoundland
They don't care. They're too busy painting the sealers as some sort of bloodthirsty barbarians who do this for the fun of it. I don't think most of them comprehend the sort of economic condition that many Newfoundlanders live in. Not to say that some of the sealers don't possibly make a decent living without sealing, but does that matter? There's money to be made sealing and people who are willing to do it for the money. The seals aren't endangered, far from it, in fact. So there's no shame in it and no need for an excuse of dire poverty to justify taking part in it. I doubt I'd want to do it, but then I'm not all that keen on hunting, fishing, working in a slaughterhouse, or working in a fish processing plant either.
Screech is a potent rum. It is supposedly so named because that is what the drinker does when he first tries it.
The story is that Newfoundland and French Islands of St. Pierre & Miquelon were the northern ends of the rum trade during the US prohibition era. Newfie schooners would make runs up from the Antilles just outside what was then the 3 mile limit of national jurisdiction. Bootleggers would come out to the schooners in fast launches and the rum would be transferred from barrels aboard the schooners to the bootleggers containers. Screech was what was left in the barrels at the end of the voyage.
I can get rum in the Ontario Liquor Control Board stores that is labeled Screech, but I submit that it is not as potent as I recall from down east.
Of course, the rum in the LCNO stores is definitely taxed.
Next time the PETA idiots come, see if you can get them to eat some seal without knowing it. :)
ROFL!!!
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