As Canada prepares to host the 2010 winter Olympics, it also prepares for its annual seal hunt. PETA decided to put the two together for their new anti-sealing campaign, using the increased public scrutiny on the nation and appealing to the Vancouver Olympic Committee for help to stop the hunt.
More than 205,000 baby seals were brutally killed during last year's hunt for their fur. At least that many are expected to perish this year to supply the fur trade. It is the largest slaughter of marine mammals in the world.
"These seals, many of whom are only weeks old when they're barbarically killed, have their skulls smashed in or are shot point-blank by hunters who are driven by profit and greed," wrote PETA president Ingrid E. Newkirk in a recent email. "The anguish that a mother seal feels as she watches her baby being beaten to death just a few feet away from her is horrifying and can be heard in her desperate cries and seen in her attempts to get to her baby."
What is interesting is that the majority of Canada's citizens oppose the hunt. And there has been worldwide opprobrium regarding the event. On Monday, the European Union inched closer to approving a trade ban on seal products from Canada and Norway, which could go into effect this spring. But the Canadian government still allows this barbaric practice to continue.
"Canadian law prohibits this kind of cruelty at animal shelters, slaughterhouses and veterinary hospitals, indeed wherever animals are killed at the hands of humans," notes an extensive report, "Seals and Sealing in Canada" released in 2007 by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). "Canadians believe if an animal must be killed, the death should be quick and humane. But as the evidence shows, this is not what happens in the commercial seal hunt."
As Canadian seal hunters armed with clubs and guns prepare for their grisly work, it is worth remembering the words of 19th-century British animal rights advocate William Ralph Inge: "We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form."
GET INFORMED
- Watch a video of actor Martin Sheen speaking out against the seal hunt
- Watch an IFAW video of the seal hunt (warning: graphic imagery)
- Sign PETA's letter to the Vancouver Olympic Committee asking for their help in putting an end to Canada's barbaric seal hunt
- Sign a Stop the Seal Hunt letter telling the Canadian government that you oppose the seal hunt
- Sign a PETA petition urging Urban Outfitters to stop selling fur products
- Bush Withholds Protections for Threatened Seal (December 26, 2008)
- Crisis in the Bering Sea (December 3, 2008)
- Fur Free Friday (November 21, 2008)
- US Proposes Protection Plan for Marine Sanctuary (August 5, 2008)
- Seal's Extinction Caused by Humans (June 13, 2008)
- EU to Propose Ban on Seal Products (April 17, 2008)
- Canadian Seal Hunt Protesters Arrested (April 9, 2008)
- Canadian Seal Hunt Begins (March 29, 2008)
- New Standards Attempt More Humane Seal Hunt (March 27, 2008)
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