© Alyson TobinA Canadian senator has proposed a “National Seal Products Day.” It’s the bright idea of Senator Celine Hervieux-Payette. Bill S-208 would designate May 20, which just so happens to be Maritime Day in the European Union, to celebrate products derived from seal-killing.[teaserbreak]
The European Union allows seal imports from the traditional northern Inuit hunt of mostly ringed seals (a species not involved with the commercial hunt) while it bans products from the vastly larger commercial hunt for mostly harp seals off the coast of Newfoundland, Labrador, and the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
In its heyday, the commercial hunt resulted in the deaths of literally tens of thousands—even hundreds of thousands—of newly-born harp and hooded seal pups on the ice floes late each winter. The hunt was originally in quest of the fats that were rendered into oil, but after World War II, the hunt became more about obtaining the snow-white pelts of the newborn animals. Most seals killed in the commercial hunt are between three weeks and three months of age, many never having reached the age where they start to feed themselves.
It was a chaotic slaughter that, once made known via filmed images to the outside world, triggered massive international opposition and investigation. The latter included the 1971 appointment of the Special Advisory Committee on Seals and Sealing, which took testimony from all stakeholders (myself included). Its “interim report,” released January 18, 1972, called for an end to the East Coast commercial seal hunt by Canadians and Norwegians by 1974, followed by at least a six-year moratorium on all seal hunting. That didn’t happen, but quotas were lowered and kills were reduced to mostly below 200,000 animals, reaching that amount only in 1981.
The last commercial seal hunt saw 38,000 harp seals killed—actually one of the lowest kills on record—while a government loan of $1 million Canadian was made to help PhocaLux International Inc. buy about 35,000 seals. Through the years, the federal government has contributed millions of dollars to subsidize and promote the seal industry. Canadian politicians find it easiest to promote exploitation of our “raw resources,” even young seals, as an alternative to promoting new forms of employment.
Animal protection groups have ignored this nonsense, and rightly so. We have enough “national days” to be ignored. I wonder if Hervieux-Payette celebrated December 4 as National Fox-fur-free Friday Day? But, to the degree that it does draw attention, it will be accompanied by grim images of the hunt: itself a reminder of what compassionate, civilized people abhor. This is why markets are closing to the unneeded products derived from young seals beaten to death or shot on the ice floes—floes whose own fates, essential to that of the harp and hooded seals, are at risk from climate change.
In short, it’s a dumb idea.
Keep wildlife if the wild,
Barry