Tell Canada To End Its Shameful Seal Slaughter
For thousands of years, harp seals have migrated from Greenland down the coast of Canada, stopping each spring to give birth on the ice floes. Every year, a band of fishers descends on the ice to beat hundreds of thousands of seals to death and sell the animals’ pelts on the international fur market. Sealers routinely hook baby seals in the eye, cheek, or mouth and drag them across the ice, often while the animals are still conscious. Many of the seals killed in the massacre are only a few weeks old.
Baby seals stand no chance against club-wielding seal hunters—pups must look on as fellow seals are bludgeoned to death only to then meet the same bloody fate. The commercial seal slaughter is an off-season profit venture for the fishing industry, and it accounts for less than 1 percent of Newfoundland’s economy. The seal slaughter is not a subsistence activity for native peoples—Inuit sealing accounts for only about 3 percent of the annual slaughter.
The price of seal fur is plummeting as international outrage against the seal slaughter rises. The U.S. and the European Union have banned seal products, and world leaders such as President Barack Obama and His Holiness The Dalai Lama have denounced the massacre.
The annual seal slaughter will continue unless people like you speak out and take action to stop it, so please add your voice to the global outcry against Canada’s shameful seal massacre. Please write to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and Canadian ambassadors around the world to demand that they bring the massacre to an immediate end.
Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (1)One Response to “Tell Canada To End Its Shameful Seal Slaughter”
Leave a Reply
My name is Elisa and I am an employee of the Government of Canada working on the seal file. I just wanted to clarify that seal harvesting practices in Canada are guided by rigorous animal welfare principles that are internationally recognized by virtually all independent observers. Also, seals that are harvested are self-reliant, independent animals. For more information, please see: http://bit.ly/9rqEQe