Canadian fisheries minister says seal hunting needs to be better explained to rest of the world

Canada's seal hunting season quietly opened in November along the eastern coast of the country.

The attention, and vocal sparring among anti- and pro-hunting interests, doesn't really ramp up until late February or early March, when female harp seals begin giving birth and more sealers take to the ice.

In the meantime, Canadian Fisheries Minister Gail Shea is trying to get the rest of the world to better understand seal hunting, slamming animal welfare groups in the process.

"Dealing with non-government organizations who are very well funded, who use these types of issues to get money into their coffers, is difficult," Shea told the Guardian in a late December interview. "They don't put out necessarily factual information. They still put out the picture of the little white seal pup, bleeding red blood on the white ice. We haven't hunted seal pups in decades."

Humane Society of the United States spokesperson Heather Sullivan told Outposts that although the young seals cannot be killed until they begin to molt their white fur, the pups are still less than 2 weeks old when their coats change.

Shea has been trying to battle a growing negative sentiment concerning the hunt, including a call to boycott all seafood exported by Canada.

"It's not just the seal hunt that's the target of these campaigns," she said. "You have to counter the campaign. We use whatever means we can to get the right story out there, the true story."

Shea asserts that the annual hunt has led to new products and research. Seal meat will be on the menu at the Canadian House of Commons parliamentary restaurant, and research is being conducted into the use of heart valves from seals, rather than from pigs, in open-heart surgery.

"Preliminary research has shown that they do not calcify quite as quickly and are a much better product,"  Shea said.

The fisheries minister is also dealing with a ban on seal products instituted last year by the European Parliament, which may have a dramatic effect on sales from this year's hunt. This ban may also influence the quota of seals to be killed this season, which has not yet been announced. Canada continues to work to find new buyers.

"There are other markets. The Europeans were a small market," Shea said.

-- Kelly Burgess

Photo: Sealers hunt for harp seals during the 2009 hunting season in the Gulf of St Lawrence. Credit: Stewart Cook / IFAW

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Comments

[jON]

There is NO spin you can put on Canadian Seal Hunting that will get the "real story" out there. These babies are killed for next to no money in horrific ways. Inhumane is inhumane no matter what you use the carcass for (and when it comes to baby seals only the pelts are really used...regardless of your "spin"). The world has seen year after year documented footage of barbaric treatment of these ANIMALS. We are also animals. They have the same capabilities for empathy as humans. So no matter how you justify killing the animals that belong to everyone or no one (NOT CANADA), we will never stop. I will funnel money into these organizations year after year and I will tell everyone every year to boycott Canadian seafood...just like major grocery and restaurant chains are doing now. We will win because we're on the right side of the times. Yesterday's purpose for hunting is no longer valid today. Take Care.

[Jun]

Ohh i guess you people would shut up if i were to hit you with a pickaxe, drag you by the eye and skin you alive? Well okay lets not make it soo cruel... How about breaking your skull first, leaving your blood to oooze out slowly onto the ice, and after making sure you are dead, i would then skin you...Ripping off your skin, exposing all your organs... Oh gosh, this sounds so exciting...

You know, sometimes people may think that doing this to animals is fine...
Well, then i hope one day you would be an animal...

[Kristen]

Wow you people need to do more research. a 'white coat' is illegal to hunt. a 'beater' is a seal pup who has started molting its white coat, this is the time when their mothers abandon them. and you tree huggers would say the same crap about any other hunt as well. are you gonna tell me that deer hunting and turkey hunting is also inhumane?
why dont you do some research before you go making an opinion on the subject. and from an objective source. not a biased one.

[tahiru entwadumela]

What Gale Shae does not fully grasp is that while Sealing may be a modern thing to do in Newfoundland- the world has long ago given it up and deemed the practice unethical. Russia too recently ended seal beating and Putin described it as a cruel and barbaric practice that should have been ended a long time ago.

[Hillary4Animals]

To Dave Wilfred's claim that the animals don't suffer, nothing could be further from the truth. In recent years, the Humane Society of the U.S. has consistently filmed hunters beating seals repeatedly on the jaw, face and body, failing to render them unconscious. Our organization has also consistently filmed sealers shooting at seals but failing to kill them, leaving the wounded animals to suffer for extended periods of time. In addition, the HSUS and other observers have documented sealers routinely impaling conscious seals on gaff hooks and dragging them across the ice floes, prior to testing for unconsciousness.

[NT]

I'm a Canadian and completely ASHAMED that such a cruel, unnecessary slaughter takes place in my country every year. Most of us don't want it but the government is only concerned about not angering the mostly red-necks , uneducated lot who do this (and losing their votes in the process). Gail Shea is a red-neck herself. I believe that the world should continue to target the markets for this hunt and boycott Canadian seafood.
The day the Canadian government went to establish seal business with China, a country that eats dogs, cats and anything that moves and that skins their animals alive for fur, that day we sold our soul to the devil.

[Jack]

A seal waddles into a bar and the bartender asks "What will you have?"

The seal responds, "Anything, so long as it's not a Canadian Club."

[Dave Wilfred]

Last year Germany killed 450,000 wild boar (Canada killed 75,00 seals). The wild boar population in Germany continues to rise, and causes problems of overpopulation - they are becoming a pest.

Canada's population estimate on seals in 2004 was 5.9 million.
This year the low number, in an even more conservative estimate, was 6.8 million.

Canada does its best to conserve this population through sustainable hunting measures - and as you can see, they work. The commercial gain brought to sealers in their local communities here gives them an incentive to conserve this population as a resource for future use.

Otherwise, these people fish...

Seals also eat fish.

At the conservative estimate of 1.0 MT annual fish consumption per seal, Canada's harp seal population alone consumes some 7 million MT of fish annually (this is just what goes in their stomachs, not what they kill)...

Canada's annual wild caught fishery, by contrast, lands approximately 0.9 million MT annually.

If a commercial, well regulated hunt cannot take place as part of the diverse livelihoods of coastal fishing people, only a few questions remain...

WILL this seal population come to fall into the category of PEST?

Will Canada turn to cull seals, like the do in the UK, Finland and Sweden, to depress the population?

How will turning a resource animal into a pest animal help the animal welfare treatment of seals during the killing?

Maybe the sealing industry does need a little better explaining...

Here's the bottom line: the animals don't suffer, hunting is a very relevant necessary activity and, as Gail Shea pointed out, there are many legitimate and potential uses for seals.

The only pathetic and criminal about this whole issue is the way the Animal Rights NGO's have managed to mislead the public based on hate-mongering and smearing coastal people, who are only doing what they can to live within their means and locales. All the while the groups controlling "the story" remain wholly unaccountable for the damage they do.

[erleen]

Now the Harper Government is spending a further $100,000 to hire a PR group to monitor seal hunt chatter on groups such as Facebook and Twitter. Just for that action they are are spending 10% of the total revenue made in 2009. The Federal Government needs to accept the industry is no longer sustainable.

It’s all merely political posturing to the Eastern Provinces. The time and resources would be better spent training the sealers to find employment doing another trade. Not all of the sealers want to be risking their lives to make an embarrassing wage anyway. If you consider all the economical implications from the hunt it’s cheaper for Canadian taxpayers to have the sealers stay at home.

[Nicolas Nasrallah]

How can you explain bludgering innocent animals for the sake of fashion to the rest of the world. Time to listen to the civilized world and stop the slaughter. I'm discusted with the slow response of the Canadian gov't in this matter. This is not about economics but about hard headed politicians in Canada. Get off you high horses and stop the hunt. Canada is a rich nation and it can create other jobs for the seal killers.

[Andrew G]

Since when is Canada supporting China's cruel animal practices? Anything to justify the seal slaughter, I suppose.

The federal (Canadian) government won't ban imports of cat and dog fur because doing so might undermine Canada's support for the seal hunt, says a newly released document.

http://www.calgarysun.com/news/canada/2009/09/24/11088116-sun.html

[Andrew G]

Explained better? Who is she kidding?

Gail Shea's definition of a 'pup' is so skewed. To her, 1 day after molting, is all that's needed to justify the slaughter. She is a desperate animal, wasting Canada's precious money, and screwing over the people of Newfoundland. More money is being thrown into keeping the hunt alive than the sealers ever make.

Pathetic.

[Jess]

Needs to be better explained, heh? Let's see here, how can one spin the attached photo..

Instead of saying "We club defenseless baby seals to death" maybe they can say "We put those four flippered lil monsters out of their misery". Yeeaahhhhh, THAT should do the trick.