BlogHer - Stop Canada's Cruel Seal Hunt - Comments

In response...

clewis — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 10:07:48 -0500

Thanks everyone for participating in this conversation. Although the original blog was directed towards the way we used web 2.0 tools for advocacy, it is easy to see how this has turned into a discussion about the issue. As an organization that has studied the Canadian seal hunt for several years, the HSUS's stance is that the hunt is unnecessary and inhumane.

You can witness first-hand the reality of the hunt on Rebecca's online journal.

In addition, here are a few points we'd like to address:

It's a regulated, sustainable hunt...

The above is not accurate - seal hunting could probably be improved, but it's not as bad a people make out. The whitecoats (the "babies") aren't even hunted anymore.

The seal hunt is a sustainable industry, and many of the facts that the campaigners use to enrol help are simply not true.

I find the whole seal hunt opposition really odd. People eat beef, which involves sustained confinement, hormonal alteration and often unclean killing techniques, but protest seal hunting, which is a quick kill, limited in number by government regulation.

The way seals are killed is not clean, quick or humane. They are clubbed on the head with a hakapik (a club with a metal spike) or shot, then stabbed with a steel hook and dragged onto the boat, where they are skinned (reports state that veterinarians found 42% of the seals they examined were likely skinned while alive and conscious) and their carcasses tossed overboard.

The seal hunt is not sustainable - particularly in 2007, where the critical habitat of harp seals is being destroyed by global warming. Over the past 10 years, between one-third and one-half of all seal pups have been slaughtered by commercial sealers. Because seals only reach breeding age at 6 years, the impacts of high hunting levels are only starting to be felt. Today's kill levels meet and even exceed those of the 1950s and 1960s, when over-hunting quickly reduced the harp seal population by nearly two-thirds. This is unacceptable when Paired with the implications of global warming on the sealsâ€™ habitat

There are regulations, but they are not followed. The Marine Mammal Regulations that govern the seal hunt require a hunter using a club to confirm that a seal is dead by performing one of two tests - a blink reflex or skull palpation - before he skins that seal or strikes another seal. Weâ€™ve witnessed countless occasions where hunters rush from seal to seal without performing either test, using illegal weapons, and hooking conscious seals and dragging them across the ice.

â€œBabiesâ€ are still hunted. Although newborn harp seals are protected from being hunted, as soon as they begin to shed their white coats (as young as 12 days old) they can be hunted. In fact, 97% of the seals killed between 2003 and 2006 have been younger than 3 months.

I'm unclear on the affect the seafood boycott will have on seal hunting. Don't get me wrong here, seal clubbing is - oh, jeez, I don't even have the words. I get that the idea is too put so much pressure on a huge industry that the industry pressures the seal hunters, but what about boycotting fur? And if the goal is to pressure Canada, why not go after maple syrup, tourism, and all other Canadian interests?

Or maybe that it's easy to pick on a small number of poor, rural people (like seal hunters) but much harder to pick on a large multi-million dollar industry (like beef processing).

The Canadian seafood boycott came from a meeting where officials from Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) told us that they will only end the hunt when Canada's fishing industry requests it. Seal hunting is an off-season activity of a few thousand fishermen from Canada's east coast. They make, on average, about 5% of their income from sealing, and the rest from commercial fisheries. Two-thirds percent of Canadian seafood is exported to the United States each year, and this gives American consumers considerable leverage in ending the seal hunt.

Our Protect Seals campaign supporters are welcome to boycott as many Canadian products and services as they'd like, but as an organization we are focusing our limited resources on the seafood sector in order to have the largest impact.

I guess the lesson is that cute animals get attention, "ugly" ones (like sharks) don't.

Yet there are no save the cows campaigns, and the beef industry is massively larger than the seal industry, so the issues are far more widespread. Sadly, seals are cute, cows aren't so much.

First of all: there are many many campaigns to save cows, battery chickens, veal, etc. etc. All sorts of less cute animals have activists working for them every day.

We are working to make the world a better place for animals, regardless of how appealing the public perceives those animals to be. Our factory farming campaign fights every day to improve the lives of farm animals. We also work to protect many other animals not considered to be as appealing as seal pups, including factory-farmed animals, rattlesnakes, sharks, crows, cormorants, gamecocks used in cock-fighting, and rats used in laboratories.

Aside from the cute factor, more than likely this is due to the fact that it's very easy to get footage of seals being clubbed.

In fact itâ€™s a very difficult hunt to observe and document because it occurs once a year in very remote areas. This is why few media outlets cover the story. Permits must be obtained, and few have the equipment and transportation to observe it. It takes a significant amount of time and coordination.

â€¦ that uses the entire seal body - not poaching like with shark finning.

But more than that: there are simply more people that object to slaughtering animals for something perceived as an unnecessary luxury, fur, then there are that object to slaughtering them for food.

As a luxury item, fur freaks me out. If you're living in the arctic and hunting and eating and wearing seal, well, I got no business pushing my politics on you.

The commercial seal hunt is wastefulâ€”seals are taken for their fur, and their carcasses are almost always left to rot on the ice. The Canadian government deliberately tries to blur the lines between the commercial seal hunt, an industrial-scale slaughter, which is conducted by non-native people off Canada's east coast, and subsistence hunting by Inuit people in Canada's arctic region. But animal protection groups, including The HSUS, are not opposed to Inuit subsistence hunting. The seals are killed for their skins, which are sold in overseas fashion markets. The carcasses are almost always left behind because there is virtually no markets for the meat. The discarded carcasses on the ice floes each spring after the hunt make it clear that itâ€™s just for the unnecessary luxury of fur.

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The Deparment of Fisheries of Ocean is not an unbiased source of information on the commercial seal hunt. Please take a look at our fact sheet.

I think the difference lies in the issue itself..

zchamu — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 10:48:36 -0500

True, people aren't perfect. But there are some arguments that are far more vulnerable to questioning than others, and I do think that's fair.

Perhaps this is why I am sometimes loath to take public stands on some issues... I am well aware of my own inconsistencies and I therefore do not speak up, knowing that I could very well be branded a hypocrite. I prefer to keep certain beliefs my own and simply practice them in my own life, because I'm generally not interested in defending them to people who just want to attack.. and I tend to run across those people regularly.

BTW I love the "free range" comment :)

Wow, what great discussion here ..

Beth Kanter — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 10:24:12 -0500

What caught my eye intially about this campagin was its mix of social media strategies with traditional advocacy. I wanted to blog on the campaign iteself and took for face value that it was inaccurate. I am a sucker for cute, I do not stand for any type of animal torture - and while I am a vegeterian, I'm not a vegan -- so not sure where this puts me in this debate.

I'm going to point Carrie who works for the Human Society to this debate because she represents the organization and can speak in more depth to the pointer to the "facts."

This kind of discussion is great for learning more about this issue ... thanks for posting your comments.

powerful

Kalyn Denny — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 21:55:38 -0500

Elisa, what a truly insightful and powerful comment.

Kalyn Denny
Kalyn's Kitchen

I have no more moral right...

Elisa Camahort — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 18:35:42 -0500

"Understood, and as a vegan I think you are probably one of the few who has a true moral right to object to this industry."

OK, so I really have to say that I don't believe that I or you or anyone has the right to say where people draw their lines. I have no more moral right to object to seal hunting than anyone else, because that would assume that we must be perfect. That it's all or nothing.

But no one is perfect...seeking out ways to call people hypocrites only discourages them from thinking through and making any moral decisions at all. And I'd rather someone take one ethical stand they believe in than take none.

OK, it'd be awesome if they took 10 stands...20, 30, 40, but there will always be more we could be doing. If we waited until we were perfect to protest we'd instead be passive.

Elisa Camahort
BlogHer and Worker Bees
elisa@blogher.org/elisa@workerbees.biz

Understood..

zchamu — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 09:02:49 -0500

Understood, and as a vegan I think you are probably one of the few who has a true moral right to object to this industry.

Keep in mind that I'm a huge softie, and I hate the idea of the seal hunt. However, I do believe the anti-seal hunt lobby exaggerates their claims and when presented outside of the context of animal welfare and the animal processing industry overall, the seal hunt is being unfairly targeted. Aside from the cute factor, more than likely this is due to the fact that it's very easy to get footage of seals being clubbed. There's nowhere near that level of visibility when they're processing cows, and that process is far less humane in many respects. But, so many people consume cow or chicken or pork products and don't want to face the hard truths, and willingly turn a blind eye, whereas they can click their tongues at seal hunting and say "isn't that awful" because they aren't consumers of seal products... or at least they don't think they are. But if that's the case, it's hypocrisy, because animal welfare is animal welfare.

In the end, if there wasn't a market for seal products, nobody would seal. But there obviously is, and seal products are in many consumer goods, including pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. So there are likely many people who are against the seal hunt who unwittingly consume seal products.

The Cute Factor

Pam — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 08:38:32 -0500

Miscellaneous thoughts:

1.Hardcore veggie/vegan types are against any animal consumption, fur, food, whatever. I'm not one of those people. If you're gonna eat animals, it would be better for everyone to farm/hunt in sustainable manners. I am absolutely not against subsistence hunting, though hunting is not for me.

2. I'll admit it. I'm a SUCKER for the cute factor. There, I said. That's why I think seal clubbing is awful. Plus, jeez, is there no better way to hunt, no less brutal method?

3. A Long Time Ago I did some work factory farming chickens and turkeys. Man, did that put me off my poultry. I want to make a crack about how seals are free range, but that just seems tacky. :)

4. As a luxury item, fur freaks me out. If you're living in the arctic and hunting and eating and wearing seal, well, I got no business pushing my politics on you. But if you're in the city? When we cleaned out my gran's closets after she died, we found this amazing 3/4 length silk lined seal fur coat. It was a thing of tremendous beauty, but no one in the family wanted it - we were all mortified by the idea of wearing it. I don't think I could get down the block in it here in Seattle, though in Vienna, wow, it wouldn't even raise an eyebrow.

Rambling. Stopping now.

Nerd's Eye View

Thanks. It's rare that I

Kuri — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 23:04:08 -0500

Thanks. It's rare that I find myself defending any business but the moral judgements ("cruel" "special place in hell") and the inaccurate hyperbole ( "largest slaughter of marine animals on Earth" - more than fishing? more than shark finning?) always manages to bait me into responding....

I read the site linked to

Kuri — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 23:01:33 -0500

I read the site linked to above as "the facts." It's fairly balanced, presenting both sides, and I don't think it supports the contention that Beth's post is inaccurate.

I think it does - if only to moderate the hyperbole. Your mileage clearly varies.

I can respect a vegan who's anti-hunt at least for consistancy, although I disagree - hunting is part of human ecology. Clothing a need, just like food, but the seals are often used for food, too (not just luxery furs, although that's the chief product). I've sampled seal flipper pie, actually. Not my cup of tea - the meat is rubbery and fatty - but people *do* eat it.

I don't think it's about the "cute factor"

Elisa Camahort — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 18:01:33 -0500

First of all: there are many many campaigns to save cows, battery chickens, veal, etc. etc. All sorts of less cute animals have activists working for them every day.

But more than that: there are simply more people that object to slaughtering animals for something perceived as an unnecessary luxury, fur, then there are that object to slaughtering them for food. As a vegan I happen not to partake of any of it, but even many ardent carnivores draw the line at fur, and I'd rather they do than to not draw a line at all.

I read the site linked to above as "the facts." It's fairly balanced, presenting both sides, and I don't think it supports the contention that Beth's post is inaccurate.

Indeed, as "the fact" link points out: the white coat is gone within 12-14 days, so I think it's probably fair to say that people would identify a 12-day old pup as a baby, white coat or not.

Elisa Camahort
BlogHer and Worker Bees
elisa@blogher.org/elisa@workerbees.biz

I totally agree with Kuri.

zchamu — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 17:48:06 -0500

It's rare that people will object publicly to the anti-sealing campaign. But I completely agree with you and applaud you for speaking out. The seal hunt is a sustainable industry, and many of the facts that the campaigners use to enrol help are simply not true.

Your point about the beef industry is key: there are many practices in raising cattle that are perfectly legal, but are not what I could call "humane" in any frame of reference. Yet there are no save the cows campaigns, and the beef industry is massively larger than the seal industry, so the issues are far more widespread. Sadly, seals are cute, cows aren't so much.

The above is not accurate -

Kuri — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 17:11:52 -0500

The above is not accurate - seal hunting could probably be improved, but it's not as bad a people make out. It's a regulated, sustainable hunt, that uses the entire seal body - not poaching like with shark finning. The whitecoats (the "babies") aren't even hunted anymore.

The facts

I guess the lesson is that cute animals get attention, "ugly" ones (like sharks) don't. Or maybe that it's easy to pick on a small number of poor, rural people (like seal hunters) but much harder to pick on a large multi-million dollar industry (like beef processing).

Seafood Boycotts?

Pam — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 08:59:16 -0500

I'm unclear on the affect the seafood boycott will have on seal hunting. Don't get me wrong here, seal clubbing is - oh, jeez, I don't even have the words.

But I'm a seafood conservation hobbyist (how odd is that) and going after Canadian seafood - some of which is farmed and fished using sustainable methods - seems a little too baby with the bathwater. I get that the idea is too put so much pressure on a huge industry that the industry pressures the seal hunters, but what about boycotting fur? And if the goal is to pressure Canada, why not go after maple syrup, tourism, and all other Canadian interests?

An all out seafood boycott will also punish sustainable seafood farmers and fishers, and I'm against that. They work hard to develop environmentally sustainable practices and should be awarded, not included in some blanket boycott.

There's no denying it, tho', there's a special place in hell for seal clubbers.

Nerd's Eye View

Stop Canada's Cruel Seal Hunt

Beth Kanter — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 08:28:42 -0500

HSUS MySpace Page | Get web badges

The Canadian seal hunt is the largest slaughter of marine mammals on Earth. More than one million baby seals have been killed for their fur during the past three years. The Human Society of the United State, along with the Humane Society International, are calling on people to boycott Canadian Seafood until the commercial seal hunt is halted.

More than 350,000 people have pledged to boycott Canadian seafood until seals like the one pictured above are safe. The Human Society has provided a great list of actions that integrate social networking tools as well as traditional advocacy methods. So, after you sign the pledge consider placing a badge, myspace layout, or videos on your blog. For more ideas, check out their action kit.

They have even created a page on MySpace that talks about the issue through the eyes of a baby seal.

Beth Kanter, BlogHer CE for NGOs, and Social Change, writes about these topics on Beth's Blog.