Boycotting Canada's Seal Hunt

MYTHS AND REALITIES: THE ATLANTIC CANADA SEAL HUNT
Marine Mammal Regulations prohibit the trade and sale or barter of the fur of baby seal pups. Baby seals are not harvested in Canada, and have not been since 1987. Adult seals cannot be harvested when they are in breeding or birthing grounds, and younger seals must be weaned, self-reliant and independent.

Check out the website of the Canadian Sealers Association. The Atlantic Canada-based association, formed in 1982 "in response to negative publicity against the sealing industry by some animal rights groups", is there to help correct inaccurate information circulating about the Canadian seal hunt.

Another information source is the Government of Canada Fisheries Department website, where those interested in finding accurate, up-to-date information about the seal hunt will discover
additional facts. Such as this one: "Canada's seal harvesting practises are "among the best in the world", taking into account rigorous internationally recognized animal welfare principles.

And these are enforced by the Government of Canada "to the fullest extent of the law". Moreover, this little item: "Veterinarians have found that the tools used by sealers are at least as humane, and often more humane than, the killing methods used in commercial slaughterhouses, which are accepted by the majority of the public."

There are some groups, however, wedded to the idea that facts are meaningless and self-righteously passionate appeals for the public to engage itself in an unwarranted boycott is their effective tool of communication. Such is the case with the Humane Society of the United States, involved in an aggressive campaign against Canada's seal industry. Rationality has no place in their argument.

The Humane Society of the United States is opting for commercial blackmail, a boycott of all Canadian seafood products. And that boycott would be generously lifted under their auspices as soon as the Canadian government ends the "cruel" and "needless" slaying of baby seals. What baby seals? It is illegal to hunt baby seals in Canada and has been for decades.

But it makes good copy; it tugs at the compassionate heartstrings of those who believe every word they are told in such slanderous campaigns to belittle an industry that sustains Aboriginal communities and a handful of Newfoundland-based sealers who hunt only adult seals. Relatively few adult seals are now hunted, in fact; the industry is just about eclipsed, given the many campaigns launched against it over the years.

Harvesting seals, in fact, is little different than raising livestock for human consumption. Where is the Human Society of the United States on that issue? They have developed an app that "allows users to locate restaurants and food suppliers who support boycotting Canadian seafood products until the country ends its annual slaughter of baby seals".

Again, loud and clear: THERE IS NO ANNUAL HARVEST IN CANADA OF BABY SEALS.

News release, January 15, 2012:

When Atlantic cod stocks went into freefall through the 1980s, while grey seal populations were simultaneously exploding, it has long seemed to Canadian fishermen that there must be a link between the two: that the seals have been eating the fish, and that the 20-year moratorium on the Northern cod fishery was a solution that did not fit the problem.

The failure of the cod to rebound even without an active fishery has only bolstered that theory. Yet, all official research seemed to disprove it, with field studies pointing to other unexplained causes of cod mortality, and the limited influence of seals.

But now, a study has found that grey seals — top predators that can weigh as much as a bear — do in fact eat a lot of cod, and are largely responsible for the fish’s decline. The finding, published in the journal Fisheries Research, is sure to stoke the controversy over a proposed government cull of a quarter million grey seals for the benefit of cod.

“To the degree that there is a scientific consensus, grey seals are not considered to have been a significant predator of cod on the Scotian Shelf,” write Robert O’Boyle and Michael Sinclair of the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in the paper. But their re-analysis of available data, including “bottom trawling surveys” done each summer and inspection of seal scat and stomach contents, shows that “increases in natural mortality of cod on the Eastern Scotian Shelf since the late 1980s have been due in large part to the exponential growth of the grey seal population.”