Commercial Harp Seal Hunting

With an estimated 5.2 million harp seals in the North Atlantic being blamed for diminishing codfish stocks and with a renewed demand for harp seal fur, the Canadian government is allowing 1 million seals to be commercially harvested in the next three years. Naturally, animal rights groups from everywhere are outraged.

"This slaughter that everyone thinks has disappeared is back with a vengeance," said Rebecca Aldworth, an antihunt advocate with the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

A majority of the seals killed are under a month old, she said, and, "at that age, the seals haven't eaten their first solid foods and have not learned to swim so they have no escape from the hunters."

Aldworth and other animal activists also complain that the seals are not killed in a humane manner.

"We filmed and witnessed seals being skinned alive right in front of us," . . . .

"We saw live seals being dragged while conscious across the ice with boat hooks, we saw stockpiles of dead and dying seals, it was really horrific."

Pretty gruesome image, eh? Perhaps if they harvested the baby seals as they were being born, it would be more acceptable. A frequently used method is to wait for the baby seal's head to come out of the mother's body, then they crush the skull and suck the brains out using a vacuum. It seems that most liberal activists support this type of tissue extraction. Otherwise, the public will just have to get used to the media regularly inserting sensational news footage of those cute baby harp seals being clubbed to death.