I'D HIT IT
Posted on 04/20/2008 11:53:51 AM PDT by Clive
Each year it's the same thing: A parade of wealthy celebrities swoop down on Canada's East Coast and accuse sealers of being meanies. This year Farley Mowat himself has joined the fight and is campaigning hard for a European ban on all seal products, which would effectively kill the hunt.
The images are potent -- defenceless animals, grim-faced sealers wielding wickedly sharp gaffs. Check out "seal hunt" on a Google image search and you'll see. The Google seals are cute as buttons -- like every child's dream of a favourite puppy.
Here's the problem: They aren't real. They're propaganda. Oh, the photos are real enough. But these seals, the little white baby harps, haven't been hunted in Canada for a generation. That was banned in the 1980s. Only adults are harvested now. We use the word harvest deliberately, because this actually is a harvest, not a hunt. The animals are shot on the ice, killed -- either with a second bullet or with a hakapik -- and skinned.
That doesn't sound very appealing, does it? For most of us, it isn't. We like our meat, our fish, our poultry, but we don't ever have to see it slaughtered or harvested. That happens in the privacy of an abattoir. But funnily enough, Mowat isn't calling for a European ban on beef cattle, or pig farming.
It's a double standard, driven by sentiment, that allows activists to set the harp seal apart from other animals that we harvest for food or pelts. They get away with this because seals look more like human beings than do steers, pigs, chickens or trout.
The truth? Harp seals are not endangered. The Canadian herd is estimated at 5.5 million -- three times what it was in the 1970s. The spring cull has been repeatedly investigated and found to be humane, by the Canadian Medical Veterinary Association, among others.
"Killing animals en masse simply to make a profit is totally abhorrent," says Mowat. Really? Then protest trout farming, Mr. Mowat. Go to Alberta and picket a cattle ranch -- see how far you get.
But please, leave the sealers alone. They're working, to earn an honest living.
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I’ve read and loved a great deal of his stuff, and yes, I accepted the fact that some of his adventures were a tad embroidered but he began to lose me with his hysterical 1984 screed: “Sea of Slaughter.”
“Wake of the Great Sealers,” with it’s dark, phantasmagorical illustrations is a deserved classic and certainly provided hard facts and anecdotes about what a nasty, brutish and short life it was being a Newfie sealer in the Bad Old Days.
You mean our children are being lied to and propagandized by the petaphiles and such?
Unbelievable...or not.
Thanks for posting this Clive, it’s a great article.
I started not to read this but I’m glad I did. If this article is accurate, then I am not opposed to harvesting the seals. I remember the stories, years ago, of not only baby seals being clubbed but also skinned alive. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I need badly enough, to support an industry like that. However, if they are killed first, then it’s no worse than other sorts of animal usage.
susie
Who likes the thought of animals being hurt or killed? But that’s the way it is.
If that seal hadn’t been clubbed by a sealer, it might have been torn into pieces by a killer whale, or starved, or any number of things. None of them pleasant.
Ever see a show where the lions eat things alive, or animals die of parasites, or starvation, or slow abuse by their own kind? That’s nature’s way, and it’s nasty.
I’ve come to the conclusion the hunted ones are the lucky ones.
Technical Briefing on the Harp Seal Hunt in Atlantic Canada
Note shis item from the Briefing:
Slide 10 - A Humane HuntNumerous organizations have studied the hunting methods used in the Canadian seal hunt and they have found them to be humane.
The hunting methods presently used were studied by the Royal Commission on Seals and Sealing in Canada and they found that the clubbing of seals, when properly performed is at least as humane as, and often more humane than, the killing methods used in commercial slaughterhouses, which are accepted by the majority of the public.
Methods used to kill seals in Canada were found to be generally more humane than the shooting of animals for sport. The Commission also found that no methods of killing which have come to their notice, other than clubbing or shooting, achieve acceptable standards of humaneness.
Did the Vegans get caught staging fake seal attacks in the past ?
Second, the populations of seals are actually up ?
The Canadian authorities manage the various populations plus the human hunters on the ice actually drive away other predators, thus fewer seals are taken ?
Excellent artice, Clive.
Though the truth it would only confuse the enviro animal rights whack jobs with facts that they certainly ignore.
Thanks for the ping, girl.
At the same time there are great numbers of people whose digestive systems have been carved out by nature to thrive best given a steady diet of seal.
Why would anyone favor giving over more land to the reindeer and biologically destroying the seal eaters.
Sounds almost demented.
Pic from 2007:
http://www.thecouncilclaw.ca/images/seal%20hunt%2007.jpg
And your point is? Did you read the article and post these pics to confirm it?
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