By Dan Wilson
“Part of our history is also whaling, for example, and the day came when the whaling industry stopped. Now, is that day coming with the seal hunt? It just may be.” – Ryan Cleary, MP, St. John’s South-Mount Pearl in a statement to the CBC last week.
This was all it took for some animal rights groups to declare a “victory” for the animals.
Seal slaughter on the bloodied ice flows off eastern Canada
Don’t get me wrong. I think butchering animals because you think their skin looks better on you than on the animals is akin to raping someone because it makes you feel sexy, but for animal protection groups to say the slaughter is over, or dead, is simply not true.
For the record, the Canadian government has made no official announcement that the seal slaughter – it shouldn’t really be called a hunt as all the victims are just lying around waiting to be bludgeoned to death – has been shelved, and Cleary has stated emphatically that he and his party, the NDP, support the killing of seals for commercial purposes, with Clearly sporting a seal-skin vest recently to prove it.
According to Cleary, last year’s “hunt” generated only a million dollars in revenue, with approximately 38,000 seals being killed (the quota set by Fisheries Minister Gail Shea was actually 400,000) leading the MP to wonder aloud if it was economically viable to continue it.
Anywhere between tens of thousands and three or four hundred thousands of these whitecoat seals are slaughtered off Canada's east coast each year so some among can have their seal-skin coat.
But let’s pretend for a moment that the seal hunt has actually been nixed. Would this really be a victory for the animals? Of course, for the actual seals not having their brains bashed in, it’s certainly much better than the alternative. But for the 53 billion other animals (not including sea life) being slaughtered for food each year because we like the way they taste, the victory would at best be bittersweet.
And because the “victory” was the result of a declining economy, rather than an increase in awareness and respect for the animals’ feelings, interests and the simple right to life, all could change overnight if it suddenly became propitious to do so again.
As long as we view other animals as commodities, grocery store items and things to serve our own ends, or things to be eliminated because they get in our way, there will be no victory for any of them.
Dan Wilson is a Niagara resident, an unwavering advocate for all creatures great and small, a vegan and a frequent contributor of posts to Niagara At Large.
(To view more images of seal slaughter click on http://www.canadiansealhunt.com/ . A warning that the photos are graphic. The Canadian Seal Hunt site is affiliated with the International Fund for Animal Welfare.)
(We welcome you to share your views on this post. Please remember that we only post comments by people willing to share their real first and last names.)
Niagara At Large 
I agree, Dan. Sure, I want to believe it’s over, but I thought Paul Watson’s comment was a bit premature, unless he knows something the rest of us don’t. Just last year the government was looking to promote such items as seal heart valve replacements for humans and the expansion of our culinary culture to include seal meat. And, I also agree that when right things are done for the wrong reasons, they can so easily be reversed when circumstances change.
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Sheila is right, times change, one of the old exuses to kill seals, was that they eat fish and make it harder for fishermen to make a living , also anything government says should be taken with a grain of salt,especially this Harper government, the almighty dollar rules, with their way of thinking, the dollar trumps everything.also with no seals, the polar bears are starving to death we have upset the whole natural food chain with our greed for money.
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Mr. Wilson will be pleased to read a Globe And Mail article today entitled,”Harper To Promote Seal Products On China Trip”.
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Has the beating of the baby seals been banned?
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Ray, thanks for your question. Do you mean the KILLING of baby seals? Sorry for the capitals but I can’t use italics on this site. As soon as harp seals begin to shed their white coats it is legal to kill them. This can take place as early as 12 days old. According to Humane Society International, 97% of the seals killed in the commercial seal hunt over the past five years (these are 2007 figures) have been less than 3 months of age (with most being one month old or less).
Sealers are known to say they don’t kill baby seals anymore, so if the definition of “baby seal” is when they still have their white coats, then yes, the killing of baby seals has been banned. Personally, I think a 12-day or 12-week old seal is still a baby. That’s not the point. The point is it’s stupid and cruel for us to kill any animal (except in self-defense) because we like the way their skins look on us, the way they taste or because we can make a buck.
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can some one show me one of these white seal skin coats? i have yet to see one. and as such, i think you’re reporting lies and half truths.
where do you get these numbers?
do you think that a hunter would tell you how many baby seals he killed this year?
does a weed dealer tell you how many pounds he has sound?
these numbers are made up to make people sad for the cute little seal.
no one cares about how we get our pork though…
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Jonathan, I believe that that is exactly Dan’s point. You won’t see white seal coats because those coats are shed at about 12 days of age. After that, they’re ‘fair game.’ So, does it make it any better to kill it at 13 days because it no longer has a white coat? Of course not. Yes, a number of the pics out there are old ones of babies with white fur. But ‘cute’ is in the eye of the beholder. What is not cute about an adult seal? And should ‘cuteness’ be the means by which we decided who lives and who dies? No.
As Dan said in the article at the top, even if sealing were banned, it would be a bittersweet victory because it would still be alright with most people to kill pigs for pork. They wouldn’t have really changed how they think about other animals, only a small subset of animals.
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