February 3, 2004. Copyright, 2004, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Canada seal hunt row set to escalate
By Joanna Griffin

LONDON, February 3, Graphic News:  With just weeks to go before the seal hunting season reaches its annual peak, animal welfare protesters have stepped up their war on the practice by urging foreigners to boycott Canada.

Protesters from the Humane Society of the United States have paid for full-page adverts urging U.S. visitors to stay away from Canada, which has refused to join other countries in banning a practice they describe as the Òlargest commercial slaughter of wildlife anywhere.Ó

The move is just the latest development in a dispute that dates back to 1969, when protesters including French actress Brigitte Bardot eventually forced Canada to introduce a ban on the hunting of ÒwhitecoatsÓ -- the baby seals prized for their fur -- with a global campaign. That victory was shortlived, however, and in 1996 the seal hunt was expanded.

Last year Canada announced that a quota of 975,000 seals would be killed off Labrador and Newfoundland through 2005. The authorities maintain that, as there are more than 5.2 million harp seals off the Atlantic coast, the species is hardly endangered. They also permit the culling of 10,000 hooded seals during the November-May hunting season.

But their main argument is that seal hunting is crucial to the survival of many isolated coastal communities who have struggled since the collapse of the fishing industry in the early 1990s. The Canadian Sealers Association says the hunts help to replenish fish stocks by controlling the seal population. The industry makes an estimated $15 million a year, primarily from pelts.

But such arguments have failed to convince animal welfare supporters outraged by what they say are bloody and barbaric hunting methods: rifles, clubs, spears or the spiked ÒhakapikÓ are used by the estimated 4,000 hunters who are active each year. They claim that many hunters ignore rules obliging them to check whether the animals are dead before removing their pelts, and say that up to 40 percent are skinned alive when they are barely more than babies.

Opponents of the hunt who had hoped for a breakthrough with the appointment of CanadaÕs first new prime minister in 10 years look likely to be disappointed. So far Paul Martin has refused to comment on the hunt whose grisly images have shocked many into supporting one of the worldÕs most bitter and emotive animal welfare campaigns.
ENDS