I’m not saying that seal hunts are banned in Canada. What HAS been banned – more than 20 years ago – is the hunting of the cute little white-coat seals all over web pages like this one.

Russia only stopped hunting them last year. Some of the photos above came from that hunt.

Dear Roger,

I would be more than happy to know that the seal hunts are banned in Canada, not only in writing but in reality. However, given the credibility of a site like BBC, I don’t quite know what to believe,

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/canada/5039460/Canadas-annual-seal-hunt-begins.html

European fur farms are cruel too but as for the scope of this blog post, it hovered around Canadian seal hunt. I’d be covering the European fur farms soon.

You people have been duped. The people running that site are misleading you to say the least. First off, no white seals (IE babies) are killed. Haven’t been killed in over 20 years since it was banned. Only juveniles and adults who have lost their baby fur are hunted.
Secondly, the main reason for the seal hunt is NOT commercial. At least not the commercial fur industry. You may recall it has gotten warmer over the past few years.. you may recall that the arctic ice is at its lowest point in history and has been getting less and less as we get warmer and warmer. You know what lives on that ice? Polar Bears! What, exactly, do you think they eat? It isn’t twigs and berries! They eat seals! But, because there is no ice, they can’t hunt!

So.. you have a extremely large population of seals who’s only predator (other than us) is unable to hunt them and is slowly being wiped out. What exactly do you think happens in that situation? They breed out of control until they eat all the available food and then die. Unfortunately that food that they happen to eating is the same food we need, IE fish!

So we have a choice. We can either cull the seal population, or we can leave them, destroy the entire fishing industry on the east coast (and devastate the marine ecosystem) and invite disease to ravage other native wild life, basically creating a swarm of cute and cuddly looking locusts. As for selling the fur on.. what exactly would you like us to do? Burn them? Throw it away? Or perhaps we can make something good come out of a situation where the choices are between the lesser of two evils. Kill something cute, or risk environmental disaster. You choose.

The hunters are well-trained to kill the animals without suffering. That includes things like the blink test to make sure that no seal is skinned alive. Like any hunt or farming operation it’s still cruel – but that training is better than virtually any other hunt or fur farming or livestock farming operation.

The hakapik is still used because it’s considered to be as effective as a rifle, if not more. A rifle has a greater risk of hurting, but not killing the seal, causing them to flee, wounded, back into the ocean to die slowly. But it makes for bad imagery, which by IFAW and Greenpeace rules is the only thing that counts.

Which is they they still feature cute little white-coat seals on their web pages and posters, more than 20 years after Canada stopped hunting them. And why they ignore European fur farms – which even at the height of the Canadian seal hunt, killed more animals in a week than the Canadian hunt killed in an entire yeat. And where the animals are kept in cages and killed by people without the training and oversight. And its why the IFAW and other groups have been proven in court to have faked several films showing cruelty.

btw, your “Seal hunting: Pictures” link above contains some pictures of large numbers of seals in pens. Canada never did that. Those photos come from Russia, which only stopped hunting white-coat seals last year, and was not subject to the strict Canadian rules.

Hi Roger!

I hope the following links would reveal the BARE truth, kindly have a view.

https://www.canadiansealhunt.com

https://www.peta.org/feat-canadasealhunt.asp

Last year 74,581 harp seals were harvested. To put that into perspective, Europe’s fur industry kills 538,000 animals per WEEK. But those are kept in cages their whole lives and killed behind closed doors, so apparently it doesn’t count.

The annual hunt isn’t a “sport”. It’s isn’t a “festival”. Where do you get that stuff?

@Chimti: If only petitions and outcry on web could turn deaf ears but then its with this hope that we live until tomorrow.

Here’s hoping that Canada govt. takes light from its policy that banned whale killing, now they receive much more revenue through conservation sights which attracts tourists.