Seal Industry Tries to Capitalize on Medical Researchers Conjectures

While I'm not a fan of using animal hearts for transplants, I'm far more sympathetic to that than to simply using their parts for human vanity consumption. But the seal industry doesn't care. They'll exploit anything to try to save their barbaric trade and, if they can use guilt, even better.

Excerpted from the Chronicle-Herald...

Dr. Philippe Pibarot has been studying seal heart valves to see if they might be a better transplant option for humans than those from cows or pigs, believing they may be more durable than the other animal tissue.

The research at Laval University is still in the earliest stages. Pibarot has yet to begin collecting data through testing rodents and he says that a clinical trial in humans is hypothetical at this point - at least a decade of positive results and funding would have to be established first.

Despite that, a Quebec-based seal fur company has begun championing Pibarot's hypothesis, seeing the research as a buoy for Canada's beleaguered seal harvest.

Swiss Activists Try to Ban Seal Products

I had no idea that Switzerland is NOT part of the EU. Therefore, the EU's ban on seal products does not apply to them. But activists are trying to change that.

Newfoundland Seal Hunt Extended

Earlier this week, Fisheries and Oceans Minister Gail Shea extended the end date of the annual seal hunt from May 15 to May 31. This is because of the poor "harvest" due to bad ice conditions.

Poor, poor seal hunters. I'm sorry, but I don't care who makes money off this barbaric practice. It's cruel. If people in indigenous communities can only make money off this, then perhaps Canada should invest in some education and economic development programs to bring these communities into a more sustainable and kinder 21st century economy. I would think they deserve better too.

Canada to Push Seal Hunt Agenda at G-7

The Canadian government is so damn stubborn on this issue. The second half of the article deals with their attempts at pushing that damn seal hunt.

Is it THAT much a part of its economy? Canada needs to stop exploiting its natural resources and move into a more sophisticated type of economy. You'd think they were a developing nation with nothing else to offer.

PETA Activist Pied in the Face

A PETA anti seal hunt activist was hit in the face with a pie in Newfoundland. This after a PETA activist hit Canada Fisheries Minister Gail Shae with a pie.

In other news, PETA received more publicity for their anti seal hunting campaign when one of their protesters was hit in the face with a pie. That's good, because I really hate Canada's odious seal hunt.

Journalists Arrested During Namibian Seal Hunt

Ugly stuff in Namibia, the country with the seal hunting that no one talks about because so few know about it (I mean who thinks about seal hunting in Namibia?)

From Wildlife Extra News...

Secret footage smuggled out of Namibia has revealed the brutal reality of the Namibian seal hunt - and the subsequent attack on British journalist Jim Wickens and South African cameraman Bart Smithers.

The dramatic film shows seals being killed by hunters during a hunt at the Cape Cross Reserve in Namibia and hunters armed with clubs running towards film maker Bart Smithers and Jim Wickens, from the UK's Ecostorm agency. The journalists, who were working on assignment with Dutch lobby group Bont voor Dieren were violently attacked by seal hunters before being detained by police.

The pair were subsequently held by the Namibian authorities before being freed after agreeing to pay a fine for "entering a protected marine area without a permit."

EU Bans Seal Imports

The New York Times reports that the ban will still allow seal products from traditional hunts by the Inuit people, also known as Eskimos, in Canada and Greenland. And Canada is going to appeal the decision at the WTO.

But still...a victory for now.

Europe Votes to Ban Seal Products

That's good news. From the press release:

Euro-MPs have voted overwhelmingly for a total ban on the trade in seal products across Europe.

A resolution at the end of a three-year campaign, triggered by a public outcry at the annual seal culls in Canada and Norway, condemned the slaughter of seals as "inherently inhumane".

Labour Euro MP Arlene McCarthy, who helped steer the ban through the European Parliament, said: "This law is a victory for people power and a credit to the campaigners involved."

Contrarian Nonsense About the Seal Slaughter

Ah, nothing like a column defending baby sea killers to get the blood going.

WHO could defend the slaughter of 300,000 harp, hooded and grey seals by hook-wielding hunters out to make a quick buck from the seals' pelts?

I could. The increasingly shrill condemnation of Canada's seal cull is based on a view of humans as bloodthirsty destroyers of nature. I would rather stand with the seal bashers than with these people bashers.

And so it goes. British journalist Brendan O'Neill talks about how the seals enjoy the great outdoors before being clubbed to death, and how nothing could be better for them then to be "made into something beautiful".

In short, it's a troll intended to piss people off. How shocking! How edgy! Somehow I doubt he gives this issue much thought other then not liking those that do care. It's the same attitude that makes US Republicans deny global warming just to make the Democrats angry. So, he pens this little poisonous article to see what kind of reaction he can get. Yawn.

Seal Import Ban Passes EU Committee

Good.

But the bill still needs the the approval of the entire EU assembly and EU governments in order to become law.

It will be tough.

Nordic EU countries such as Denmark, Sweden and Finland have opposed such a ban, and EU legal experts say it could violate world trade rules.

Canada and Greenland have warned the EU that they could challenge such a ban before the World Trade Organization.

Canada and Greenland Defend Seal Hunting

Oh, yeah, I forgot about Greenland. They are testifying with Canada against an EU ban on seal products. Both claim that a ban would be devastating.

They spoke before a hearing on the proposed ban.

Greenland Fisheries Minister Finn Karlsen, dressed in a traditional white Inuit sealskin jacket, insisted such a ban would “have severe and negative consequence for hunters and their families.”

“Our culture and our economy are at stake and it’s something I cannot accept,” he told lawmakers.

Canadian fisheries ministry representative Garry Stenson said the hunt “is humane, well regulated and sustainable” and that new rules for the hunt were under review to strengthen inspections, monitoring and enforcement of animal welfare rules.

Canada has said a ban could violate trade rules and it threatened action if a ban was introduced. It said a ban would decimate isolated east coast communities that are heavily dependent on the annual hunt.

The article does say that the Inuit communities would have special exemptions.

I'm not sure it will pass though. This proposal would require all 27 EU nations to approve it.

Ottawa to Lobby EU Against Seal Ban

They must really be nervous.

Federal Fisheries Minister Gail Shea said Monday that Canadian officials will meet with EU politicians in a bid to convince them that Canada's commercial seal hunt is humane and should be exempt from a proposed seal import ban.

...A ban could deliver a devastating blow to Atlantic Canadian fishermen who rely on the annual hunt as a source of income, shutting down critical shipment points, including Holland and Germany.

The meeting is scheduled for January 21.

Canada Up to Its Old Seal-Killing Tricks

Here they go again. Trying to put a humane face on a barbaric practice.

The amendments to the Marine Mammal Regulations, which include strengthened federal enforcement, come just over a month after newly appointed federal Fisheries Minister Gail Shea said Canada is "going straight ahead for the 2009 hunt. We're proceeding as usual."

"No person shall use a club or a hakapik to strike a seal older than one year unless the seal has been shot with a firearm," states one of the new rules, posted Saturday in a government publication but not on the Department of Fisheries and Oceans website.

However, this rule will have little effect because fewer than than one percent of the seals killed during the annual hunt are older than a year.

...Under the new rules, the existing "blink test," used to check whether seals are unconscious before skinning is being eliminated because it is unreliable. The sealers must now feel the seal's cranium to make sure it is broken. Sealers must bleed the animals for 60 seconds before skinning.

...Yet, it is still legal to shoot seals in the water, where none of the new rules can be followed.

Activists in Canada Found Not Guilty of Getting to Close to Seal Slaughter

That's good news.

A judge has found five animal-rights activists not guilty of getting too close to seal hunters during the 2006 hunt off Canada's east coast.

The five were charged with coming within 10 metres of seal hunters on March 26, 2006 while filming the annual slaughter in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, not far from Cape Breton.

They are representatives of Humane Society International and Humane Society of the United States.

Activists Try to Ban Seal Products in EU

If they can't stop the Canadians from slaughtering seals, activists are trying to take the economic incentive away.

A coalition of animal rights groups used jarring, graphic and emotive images Friday in its bid to secure a European Union ban on seal products.

At news conferences across Europe, they showed clips of hunters clubbing and shooting young seals, skinning one of the shot animals shortly after it was hooked and tossed on a boat.

While the animal appeared lifeless, there was little indication that the hunter made great efforts to ensure the animal was dead.

Sea Shepherd Mixes it up with Canadian Coast Guard

Once again, Sea Shepherd is in the thick of it. This time, with the Canadian Coast Guard over the seal killings.

A Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker and a ship steered by animal rights activists opposed to Canada's annual seal hunt collided in the Gulf of St. Lawrence overnight, officials said Monday.

A Fisheries and Oceans department spokesman said the Coast Guard vessel Des Groseilliers twice "grazed" the Farley Mowat owned by the militant Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

There was "no damage done" nor any injuries reported, he said.

Canadian Seal Killers Said to be Breaking New Law

Well, that didn't take long. The Canadian government's new requirement that hunted seals be actually dead before they skin them is already being ignored.

Activists from the Humane Society of the United States and the International Fund for Animal Welfare were using helicopters to monitor the hunt's opening days.

"We've just filmed four seals being killed and not a single one was bled out before moving it," said Sheryl Fink, a hunt observer with IFAW.

Another observer, Cheryl Jacobson, said: "We filmed as a sealer struck a seal with a hakapik before it slipped into the water. The sealer tried to pull the seal out by the hind flippers but it slipped underwater anyway. This wounded seal will most likely die underwater."

What a dirty disgusting business.

Here is a slide show from the International Fund for Animal Welfare.