Seal Slaughters in Canada.

This week I decided to focus in on a whole different part of the Humane societies outreach programs, their focus on marine life specifically. I wanted to stay current with the events and debates that are going on in the world of animal science and found a very pertinent issue to today’s society, the slaughter of Seals for fur in Canada. More than 1,000,000 seals have been slaughtered in the last few years. The fur from seals is used in fashion garments and also a small section for oil and the meat is mostly unusable, the skinned bodies are left on the ice to rot and be eaten by predators walking by occasionally. The Canadian Government defines “the slaughter of seals as primarily a fur hunt”.

The hunters participate in this hunt during the off-season from fishing. This occupation does not bring in loads of income; it has been found that about 1/20^th of their earnings come from sealing. Most of these sealers are found to be on Canada’s east coast and in Newfoundland. There are fewer than 6,000 sealers in the population of near half a million people” accounts for less than 1 percent of the province's economy and less than 2 percent of the landed value of the fishery”. Showing that it is not a thriving huge economy and source of income in Canada.

The worst part of this the slaughter, is the level of barbarism that is used to kill them. The Canadian government allows these hunters to use wooden clubs, hakapiks (large ice-pick-like clubs) and guns. Guns seem to be much more humane, but these sealers are shooting from a moving swaying ship, when the seal is targeted, it usually suffers for many hours and only shot once due to the loss in value from bullets, left to suffer, then clubbed to death.

“Dr. Mary Richardson, a Canadian veterinary expert in humane slaughter methods, concluded that the commercial seal hunt is inherently inhumane because of the environment in which it operates and the speed at which the killing must be conducted.” Veterinarians also studied and found that 42 percent of the cases they studied, there was not enough evidence of cranial injury to even guarantee unconsciousness at the time of skinning. Meaning that half of the cases were skinned alive..

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One thing that the Canadian government could easily do, which is supported by animal protection groups and settlers, is a federal buyout of the commercial sealing industry. This would involve the federal government “buying back” sealing licenses from fishermen, while compensating them for the money they would make, and putting an end to the slaughter of seals.

The argument that seals are overpopulated is an incorrect argument to make. The number of Harp seals in the North Atlantic is supposed to somewhere in the many millions. Since 1950s over-hunting dramatically reduced the harp seal population two thirds. Senior Canadian government scientists in 1970 warned that the population could be lost altogether if commercial sealing was not suspended for at least a decade. Which also puts to rest the argument that these seals are endangering the fishing market, the real danger is the human element. Our over-fishing is what is diminishing the market.

I researched further to see what I could do for these seals and found that there are many boycotts against canadian seafood that the Humane Society and other organizations hold. You also can go to the humane societies webpage and donate if you feel strongly enough. I feel that this barbaric act has gone on long enough.