Canadian seal cull
Each year hundreds of thousands of young seals – most only a few days old – are slaughtered on the ice floes off Canada’s east coast for their skins. Over the past three years, the Canadian government has allowed over 300,000 seals to be killed annually.
Every spring the female harp seals gather on the newly formed sea ice to give birth to their pups. The newborn pups grow fast on their mother’s milk and develop a warm fluffy white coat after about a week. They are safe while these last because killing ‘white coats’ has been banned. After a few weeks however, sleek, black-spotted, silvery pelts replace their soft white coats. When this happens, the sealers go on to the ice armed with clubs and guns to begin the killing.
Early in the season, harp seals are killed with clubs or hakapiks as they sit helpless on the ice – being young they are unable to escape, as they still cannot survive in the water. Later in the season, they are shot both on the ice and in the water. Some seals are skinned alive – their pelt being removed before they are fully unconscious.
The Canadian government claims that the harp seal population needs to be culled to protect the North Atlantic cod fishery. In reality, the decline in fish stocks is due to over over-fishing by trawlers. And anyway, seals eat the North Atlantic cod’s main predator so if there were no seals the situation would be much worse.
In July 2008, following months of demonstrations and thousands of signatures on petitions and many letters sent, Stavros Dimas, the European Union’s Environment Commissioner announced that clothing made from seal fur is to be banned throughout the EU. Europe’s fur markets are the biggest buyers of Canada’s seal pelts, so it should be a huge blow to the Canadian seal hunt!
It’s not yet known what the full rules will be, as legislation in the EU takes a long time to develop. The law will affect only products coming from hunts considered cruel, where the EU judges that the seals suffered, so we can expect arguments from Canada that their hunt is humane. So it’s not over yet.
Want to know more?
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