Canada’s seal “harvest”: biggest animal slaughter in North America

Spencer Warren writes

In about fifty days an annual event is scheduled to begin in Newfoundland, Canada with the approval of the Canadian government—the most brutal, systematic killing of animals in North America, the Canadian seal slaughter.

In recent years, the just departed Liberal government, renowned for its multiculturalist sensitivity, permitted a few thousand fishermen from Canada’s East Coast to kill the baby seals for their fur in numbers unseen since the slaughters of the 1950s—more than 300,000 each season. According to the Humane Society of the United States, the seals are clubbed one by one or shot. Pictures show the ice flows running red with their blood. Independent veterinarians who observed what the government calls the “seal harvest” have stated that up to 42 percent of the seals they studied were skinned alive—while conscious. Each year journalists, politicians and scientists have documented conscious seals being stabbed with boathooks and dragged across the ice. They have observed wounded seals—many as young as 12 days old—being left to die, piled up in heaps of living, suffering creatures.

This slaughter is subsidized by the Canadian government. The fishermen make a very small fraction of their incomes from these atrocities and the economic contribution to the local economy is marginal, according to information from the Humane Society.

After a video of the “harvest” was recently shown on Danish television, that government announced a ban on importation of seal furs into Denmark or its colony, Greenland, formerly a major source of imports. The Humane Society is promoting a boycott on travel to Canada as well as a boycott of Canadian fish, which has been joined by major U.S. companies such as Legal Sea Foods and Whole Foods Market. The newly elected Conservative Party has in the past taken a position against the seal slaughter, and there is some hope it will stop this atrocity.

More information can be found at www.protectseals.org.

This is a model for spontaneous citizen action and I hope it will interest VFR readers.

A reader writes:

First, let me state that I am not a fan of this seal harvest and am opposed to any kind of cruel treatment of animals. For years I have not consumed veal as I consider the method of producing veal to be cruelty to the veal calves.

Mr. Warren writes:

“The fishermen make a very small fraction of their incomes from these atrocities and the economic contribution to the local economy is marginal, according to information from the Humane Society.”

1) The income derived by the fishermen is sufficient motivation for them to engage in this activity, otherwise they wouldn’t do it.

2) The Humane Society is as liberal as the Sierra Club, not a credible source.

If my memory serves me correctly it was Mr. Warren who supported the anti-growth position in the last Virginia election. I would like to be present to hear Mr. Warren explain to a retiree that the land he (the retiree) invested his money in with the expectation of profiting from development was now worth substantially less than he paid for it and that he might practice saying “Welcome to Wal-Mart.”

Spencer Warren replies:

My critic makes an ad hominem attack on the Humane Society, which works with conservatives like Senator Rick Santorum as well as liberals on humane issues. This kind of narrow-minded prejudice, without even a single fact to support one’s position, is typical of extremists right and left. Has the critic looked at the photographs on the website I provided – including men standing over helpless little animals with spiked poles to beat their heads in, and the ice flows red with blood? Or perhaps the critic wants to claim, without evidence, that the photographs, or the video that shocked the Danish nation, are faked. Or maybe the Canadian Conservative Party is mistaken in opposing the slaughter?

With regard to my point about cancerous development devouring the northern Virginia countryside, if the critic wishes to place the profits of a small number of investors over the overall interests of society (including commuters who face ever-worsening traffic jams with the attendant stress and loss of time with their families), he or she may take this view. But such a viewpoint is closer to the radical libertarian than the traditional conservative. As is the critic’s statement that the income gained by the Canadian fisherman is justification for the appalling un-Christian suffering they inflict on helpless little animals. As Ayn Rand once wrote, libertarians are “hippies of the right.” (No, I am not an objectivist; I merely cite the quote for its insight.)

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 03, 2006 07:58 PM | Send