The Season of Killing Baby Seals has Begun
Amidst worldwide protest and controversy, Canada’s shameful annual massacre of 300,000 baby harp seals began today. Mass killings are underway in the Saint Lawrence Gulf and will soon expand to Newfoundland. Canada’s seal hunt (if you can call bludgeoning defenseless baby animals to death “hunting”) is the largest massacre of marine mammals in the world, and has sparked outrage and a pending ban on imports of all seal products in the Europe Union. Last week, Russia announced it was banning its annual baby seal hunt– one tenth of the size of Canada’s– as inhumane and cruel. Want to take action for the seals? Start here.
http://getactive.peta.org/campaign/seal_hunt_09
by Cat Lincoln, Feb 20th 2009 @ 1:19PM
For some (dumb, naive) reason, I was shocked to hear that the vicious seal hunting trade is still going strong in Canada. I mean, how can sealers still be allowed to:
* "hunt" a couple hundred thousand baby seals
* use a club like a caveman (i.e. hit them with a big blunt stick)
* only half kill them
* strip the skins off their painfully still-breathing bodies, and
* sell each pelt for a rocking $30 -- Canadian dollars, to add insult to injury!
Once again, I find myself in the awkward position of agreeing with PETA. The activist group would like to see Vancouver, home of the 2010 Winter Olympics, use that world stage to denounce seal hunting.
Btw, did I mention that hunters kill the baby seals? In front of the mother seals? Often the seal pups are just a few weeks old, and some haven't even been in the water. Apparently that soft baby fur is what rich old ladies and vain men like best.
PETA has an online petition that will take you a nanosecond to sign -- go sign it and come back, I'll wait.
Okay, back? Now, in the spirit of grotesque and dramatic PETA gestures (and because I accidentally found all these photos and can't keep the horror to myself) I invite the strong-stomached out there to check out the gallery of baby seal carnage.
Fair warning, it's bloody and unpleasant and totally NSFW. You could say the images almost club you to death with the truth.
