"Make this year's seal hunt the last"

The Friday, March 18, Christian Science Monitor has an op-ed by HSUS's Rebecca Aldworth, describing the horror of the upcoming seal hunt and calling for a boycott of Canadian products. It is headed "Make this year's seal hunt the last." (Pg 9.)

Aldworth tells us that right now, in an idyllic scene on Canada's East Coast, "serene mother seals lie contentedly and peacefully with their nursing pups. But just days later, the peace of the ice is shattered as seal hunters descend on the defenseless pups, and the nursery is turned into an open-air slaughterhouse.

"Beginning in the last week of March, hundreds of thousands of seal pups will be clubbed and shot to death in Canada's annual commercial seal hunt. It is an industrial-scale slaughter that targets the animals for their fur, and leaves their carcasses to rot on the ice. With more than 300,000 pups allowed to be killed this year, it has become the largest slaughter of marine mammals on earth."

We read of brutal treatment:
" In 2001, an independent team of veterinarians was escorted to the ice floes by the International Fund for Animal Welfare. They studied Canada's commercial seal hunt at close range. Their report concluded that up to 42 percent of the seals they studied had probably been skinned alive while conscious - a clear violation of Canada's criminal code and marine mammal regulations that govern the hunt."

And we learn of the call for a boycott on Canadian seafood:
"When the first pup is clubbed or shot to death on the ice at the end of March, the Humane Society of the United States, with a network of powerful organizations that includes the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Born Free Foundation, will launch a global boycott of Canadian seafood.

"We are asking Americans not to buy Canadian seafood products, such as snow crabs, until the commercial seal hunt is ended for good. American consumers can easily identify Canadian seafood products, which are labeled clearly in all major grocery stores."

You can read the whole piece on line at: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0318/p09s01-coop.html?s=hns

Aldworth will be at the hunt, as she has been in the past, documenting the massacre. HSUS has a page with suggestions on what we can do to help at: http://www.hsus.org/marine_mammals/protect_seals/protect_seals_what_you_can_do/ OR http://tinyurl.com/4nkgs

Sea Shepherd, another of the groups calling for the boycott, will also be in Canada documenting and protesting the hunt. You can read about and support that group's efforts at: http://www.seashepherd.org/seals/seals.html.

And you can sign a petition against the hunt at:
http://www.seashepherd.org/seals/seals_petition.html

And please help keep this topic alive in the paper with supportive letters to the editor. The Christian Science Monitor takes letters at: http://csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/encryptmail.pl?ID=CFF0C5E4

Also, why not write a letter to your local paper letting people know about the hunt and the boycott? Don't hesitate to ask me for help if you have any difficulty finding the correct address for a letter to the editor or would like me to edit a letter.

Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Shorter letters are more likely to be published.

Yours and the animals',
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. If you forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts, please do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include this tag line.)