News: Senator Mac Harb talks about how the days of making money on the commercial seal hunt is over.
FriendsForSeals.org
The customer base for Canada's dead seals is gone, yet the killing continues.We hope you'll join in the conversation going on now. Click this link: https://www.facebook.com/FriendsForSeals.ORG?sk=app_4949752878
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Monday, February 13, 2012
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Sunday, January 29, 2012
News Travels Slowly These Days
The world has spoken and it wants Canada's dead seals no more.
The United States leaving behind the practice of seal killing decades ago, the imposing figure of Russia's Vladimir Putin putting a stop what he called "a bloody industry", and the nail-in-the-coffin decision of the European Union banning the import of seal products, leaves Canada alone.
By themselves, with no customer, the handful of commercial fishermen who cruelly kill thousands of seal pups each year look to the taxpayer for funding, and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans for purpose, to continue to kill seals.
The market for seal pelts is closed.
The DFO has tried and tried to cater to the last remaining participants by having it appear to the public that the seal hunt is necessary, but there is no country in the market for dead seal.
For 25 year's the Canadian government has tried to shove seal fat down the gullet of the Chinese. They don't want it, and the growing animal welfare voice of China, becoming tired of their own country's practices, has become highly offended.
Canada continued the killing, even though the fishermen, violating Marine Mammal Regulations, admitted that they kill seals and don't even bring them in because there is no money in them.
The government, reeling from losing their fight of the EU's decision at the World Trade Organization, tried to make the public believe that maybe, just maybe, the dead seals heart valves could be useful.
But no.
The taxpayer will continue to pay for fishermen, who already have full-time jobs at fishing, to go out to kill seals "for sport" as they put it, but see no return on the investment.
The seal hunt is dead.
The old joke, "The 80's didn't come to Canada til like '
Monday, May 2, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
"The Willing Victim of Rhetoric"
When speaking of the annual commercial seal hunt in Canada, politicians and supporters inevitably mention the necessity of the killing by placing focus on the aboriginal peoples. Canada's government uses the coastal communities indigenous as an excuse to continue the seal slaughter, falsely citing the hardship ending the hunt would cause them.
This rhetoric goes on so often that some citizens assume it to be true.
This rhetoric goes on so often that some citizens assume it to be true.
However, the commercial seal slaughter and the hunting by the indigenous, are two completely separate things,
Of the typically hundreds of thousands of seals killed in Canada each year, 1% are killed by the native peoples.
Campaigns calling for the end of commercial seal hunting do not effect them. Even the EU ban on commercial seal products excludes them.
Every year, each has it's own quota. COMPLETELY SEPARATE.
Every year, each has it's own quota. COMPLETELY SEPARATE.
Politicians know this, which means that using a matter-of fact manner about a known misconception, shows a lack of integrity, and the coastal community buys into it. If politicians were genuinely concerned with economic stability, they would cancel commercial seal hunting immediately.
Canada's government has been irresponsible in continuing to use taxpayer funding to "create" a product, in this case, dead seals, and hoping to find a buyer afterwards.
Each year their customer base not only grows smaller and smaller, but for the past several years, has been virtually non-existent.
Besides believing the effect on the native peoples, some Canadians even believe that the $4.3 million they spent for Coast Guard assistance for the 2009/2010 seal hunt wasn't an additional cost. This couldn't be less true. Each year the Coast Guard, while somehow allowed to be directed by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, are deployed to lead seal hunter boats, break ice for the seal killers, and rescue/retrieving them during the many accidents, including drownings. This is time and money spent above normal operations and duties meant for this Federal branch.
Though most of Canada and the world wants the seal hunt to end, the government dismisses their desires, switching the blame to over-population of seals. Without getting into how this is impossible in an undisturbed eco-system, Canada needs to tell the government that they see through the smoke and mirrors. If the seal hunt goes on due to over-population, why, if the hunting of harp and grey seal season is from November 15 through June 15 each year, does 95% of the killing occur after pups are born in the spring? If killing were done due to over-population, wouldn't the commercial fishermen of Canada be killing adult seals of breeding age?
Only Canada's citizens can allow the government to continue to shamelessly misconstrue the facts. Why would anyone allow "tradition" to get in he way of thinking for themselves?
The miniscule amount of dollars brought in by an industry that has long fallen off of its last leg, is dwarfed by the funding taken from the taxpayer. How much? About 3 times as much.
While tax dollars are being wasted on DFO mismanagement, compensation to fishermen for boat damages, travel expenses to find customers for seal products, taking countries and the EU to the WTO to fight seal bans, not to mention the loss of respect by the rest of the world, and pending trade deals with the EU, there IS one facet of the seal slaughter industry that is paying off big time - that's the propaganda campaign.
-Denise Perrin
-Denise Perrin
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