Stop the seal culling

As Canada prepares to cull 275,000 of the baby seals living off its shores by clubbing them to death or shooting them for their fur, we look into why this barbaric practice must end.

Hundreds of thousands of baby seals will be clubbed to death over the coming days by fishermen as part of Canada's controversial annual seal hunt.

The seals are born in March and for the first few weeks of their lives they are nurtured by their mothers. But at just 12 days old, when their white coats change colour, it is no longer against the law to hunt them. Only in Russia can ?whitecoat? seals still be culled.

Last year, 98.5 per cent of the 224,000 pups killed off of Canada's shores were under three months old. ?They are very much like human babies - they cry and call for their mum the same way,? said one anti-culling protestor.

Yet as soon as the winter ice floes have broken up sufficiently to allow fishing boats to reach the seals, the hunting begins. And this year, the culling limit has been set to 275,000. The Canadian Government says it will not threaten the population of up to six million seals, arguing that sealing is an important part of the local economy.

Few Canadians make a living from hunting seals, however. Sealers are fishermen by trade who make a small amount of additional income for a few weeks a year from the slaughter. In fact, the majority of Canadians themselves are against the hunt, with 72 per cent supporting regulations to ban the hunting of seal pups.

Contrary to popular belief, the native Inuit communities who use seals for their meat and oil only use a tiny fraction of the seal population. For the mass culling that takes place around the world, there is little commercial use for the rest of the seal, so many carcasses are simply discarded on the ice after they have been skinned. Only the seal fur is needed for use in the fashion industry, with each pelt fetching around £25 to £40. Hunters can expect to make £2,000 each in a few days.

Over in Europe, only a handful of EU states have fully outlawed the trade in seal products, and the UK is not one of them. Belgium, Holland, Italy and Germany have all introduced legislation to ban seal products. But while the British Government objects to the hunt, it has not taken similar action, as it believes the EU is close to introducing the import ban.

Still, with ports such as Rotterdam and Hamburg now closed to Canadian exporters, animal welfare groups believe there will be an increase in products sent to British ports unless a ban is implemented.

Welfare groups claim that if the EU was to forbid producers of seal products from trading within European borders, the effects would instantly be felt. In 2006, 32 per cent of Canadian seal fur exports went to the EU. If this practice was banned, Canada would no longer be able to use these European ports to access major markets in China and Russia.

UK Director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, Robbie Marsland, will be in Canada again this year to witness what is now the biggest marine mammal hunt in the world.

He told Sky News, "I've stood on the ice and witnessed for myself the suffering as thousands of seals, mostly pups under three months of age, are clubbed or shot and skinned, often while still alive, so their fur can be used to make luxury fashion items that nobody really needs.

"Given the nature of the hunt - taking place in a large area over a short space of time - it is very difficult to regulate, and every year we see many seals clubbed but not fatally wounded before being skinned. Others are shot and injured before being either hooked and dragged aboard a boat or slipping beneath the surface of the water to suffer a slow death from drowning.?

There are also fears that the huge quotas set by the Canadian government each year could have serious consequences for the future of the harp seal population. With 98% of the seals killed being young pups which will never have the chance to reproduce, scientists predict that annual hunts at this level could reduce the population by 70% in the next 15 years.

"IFAW is working to secure bans on the trade in seal products in European countries to reduce the market for seal products and to send a message to Canada that we want no further part in this cruelty. It is time for this senseless slaughter to end,? added Mr Marsland.

The Canadian culling comes just weeks after a cull of 35,000 baby seals in Russia was called off. In the Archangel region of northern Russia, the slaughter of thousands of seals was halted amid protests by celebrities and environmental groups, and calls for hunting to be outlawed.

Officials insisted the cull was cancelled to protect the hunters, not the seals, because ice sheets close to the White Sea were too thin to walk on. The decision, however, came at a time of heightened protests by animal rights groups. Russian television broadcast a demonstration in Archangel by a group of celebrities and prominent journalists against the practice, and 335,000 people had also signed a petition against the hunting of baby seals.

When the Governor of Archangel announced it wanted to end the cull for humanitarian reasons, the response was anger from local villagers, who claimed that the trade was vital to their survival. Fur coats remain de rigueur for most Russian women and there is no stigma attached to wearing one.

What do you think about seal culling? Talk about it here.

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Canadians will one day have to 'pay' for what they have been doing all this time.

The 'Kharma Police' will catch up with them, even the ones who sit back, do nothing and let it happen in their own back yard.

My thoughts on this matter are similar to Spiroidal's.

Yeah, lets just save the fluffy cute animals only..!

People bleat on about the dolphins getting tangled up in Tuna nets, what about the poor bloody Tunas ?

I was just wondering if the author of this journal (Anile) eats meat, wears leather, uses cosmetics or traditional Chinese medicine.

spirodial- actually seals aren't that pretty when they do grow up and yes there are incidences of seals killing people and yes- i would feel the same!!

justin- i'm guessing you're a die hard vegan yourself as you're ready to question the op's ethics??

Stegee - I'll have to let you know later on that one, I'm half way through a steak right now!

"I just wonder if the same outrage and feelings would exist if they weren't white, fluffy and big eyed baby seals being culled.

If they were an ugly as hell little creature that had the potential to kill you when it grew up?

Wonder if people would feel the same then?"

ya what if cows and chickens were cute, ppl would be freaking about the being beat over the heah with a hammer, and haveing the heads cut off. Its done for a reason, and its not my place to interfere with it.