Canada unveils annual seal hunt, slams activists

OTTAWA, March 22 (Reuters) - Canada said on Tuesday it would allow 320,000 young seals to be killed this year and launched an unusually strong attack on activists who promise to boycott Canadian seafood products in a bid to stop the hunt.

Ottawa says the hunt helps ensure the health of what it describes as a booming seal population. But pictures of hunters clubbing defenseless animals to death have turned the event into an annual public relations nightmare for the government.

The two-month hunt, which starts this year on March 29, takes place on ice floes off the Atlantic coast where the seals give birth. Canada says the hunt is humane, but animal rights groups insist many animals are skinned alive and die in agony.

Fisheries Minister Geoff Regan, reflecting increasing frustration with the activists, said they were issuing "misleading rhetoric and sensational images that tell a selective, biased and often false story" about the hunt.

"It is a real disgrace to have such negative light being cast on the Canadian men and women of this industry... These carefully orchestrated campaigns twist the facts of the seal hunt for the benefit of a few extremely powerful and well-funded organizations," he said in a blunt statement.

Officials say the population of harp seals is now five million animals, triple what it was in the 1970s, and says large-scale hunting will be allowed to continue until the number falls to 3.85 million.

Ottawa says the hunt protects depleted fish stocks and provides jobs in the economically depressed eastern province of Newfoundland. The province's cod fishery collapsed a decade ago and some fishermen say seals were partly to blame.

Anti-hunt activists, who held protests last week in 50 cities around the world, said they would press ahead with calls for a boycott of Canadian seafood.

Canada's fishing industry exports around C$3 billion ($2.5 billion) a year to the United States while the seal hunt generates just C$16.5 million a year, mostly from pelt sales.

"I think that they (the Canadian government) are feeling the heat ... they can see the really serious implication of going ahead with the hunt this year," said Pat Ragan of the Humane Society of the United States.

Ragan said the campaign would target restaurant chains such as Red Lobster -- a unit of Darden Restaurants Inc. -- that buy Canadian seafood.

"We're going to be encouraging consumers to enter into dialogue with their grocery stores and their restaurants and say 'Please don't serve Canadian seafood' or 'I won't buy Canadian seafood until this hunt is over'," she told Reuters.

Some activists are already in the Atlantic region to watch the hunt. Officials said that if too many observers turn up they would be prevented from interfering with the hunt.

The great Mr. Zappa knew how to prevent seal molestation:

*(Well, right about that time people
A fur-trapper (who was strictly from commercial)
Had the unmitigated audacity to jump up from behind my igloo (peekaboo) )
And he started into whippin' on my favorite baby seal
With a lead-filled snowshoe)*

I said, with a
Lead-
Filled
With a lead filled snowshoe
He said, "Peekaboo"
I said, with a
Lead-
Filled
With a lead filled snowshoe
He said, "Peekaboo"
He went right upside the head of my favorite baby seal
He went "whap" with a lead-filled snowshoe, and
He hit him on the nose and hit him on the fin, and he
That got me just about as evil as an eskimo boy can be. So I bent down
And I reached down, and I scooped down and I gathered up a generous
Mitten-ful of the deadly *YELLOW SNOW*

The deadly yellow snow, from right there where the huskies go!

Whereupon I proceeded to take that mittenful of the deadly yellow snow
Crystals and rub it all into his beady little eyes with a vigorous
Circular motion hitherto unknown to the people of this area, but destined
To take the place of the mudshark in your mythology
Here it goes,the circular motion, now Rub It!

*(Here Fido)*

And then
In a fit of anger
I pounced

And I pounced again

Great googly moogly!

I jumped up and down on the chest of the him

I injured
The fur trapper

Well he was very upset, as you can understand
And rightly so, because the
Deadly yellow snow crystals had
Deprived him of his
Sight

And he stood up, and he looked around, and he said

"I can't see"
"I can't see"
"Oh, woe is me"
"I can't see"

"Well.....you know
I can't see
Nothin'"

"He took a dog-doo snow cone and stuffed it in my right eye
He took a dog-doo snow cone and stuffed it in my other eye
And the husky wee-wee
I mean the doggie wee-wee
Has blinded me
And I can't see
Temporarily"

Well, the fur-trapper stood there, with his arms outstretched across the
Frozen white wasteland, trying to figure out what he was going to do about
His deflicted eyes. And it was at that precise moment that he remembered
And ancient Eskimo legend, wherein it is written (on whatever it is that
They write it on up there) that if anything bad ever happens to your eyes
As the result of some sort of conflict with anyone named
Nanook,
The only way you can get it fixed up is to go

Trudging across the tundra
Mile after mile
Trudging across the tundra

Right down to the parish of St. Alphonzo

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