Relaunching the seal-hunt wars

[Animal 0]

Toronto Star
BOB HEPBURN

Chris Cutter was sitting in a restaurant Monday on Prince Edward Island
when a waitress asked him about seals. Cutter, who works for the
International Fund for Animal Welfare, was wearing an IFAW coat with a
seal logo and was easily identified as an anti-sealer.

The waitress was in her 30s and had lived her entire life in
Charlottetown. She had no idea the seal hunt still went on, thinking it
had ended years ago.

"I know it is just one person, maybe an anomaly," Cutter said. "But I
have had enough experiences like that to think there is something
there. And this is in Atlantic Canada. I assume that fewer people know
in Toronto."

Yes, in case you don't know or merely forgot, the annual spring seal
hunt is still going strong in Atlantic Canada.

And this spring, more seals will be killed than in any previous year.

Indeed, up to 350,000 seals could be killed by early May. That is
almost three times as many as when the anti-seal-hunt campaign was
launched more than 30 years ago.

If anything, despite years of protests and boycotts, the campaign
against the hunt has been a failure.

About all it has accomplished is that sealers have been banned since
1987 from killing those cute little white seal pups whose adorable
faces were splashed on anti-seal-hunt posters around the world.

That dismal record of failure is the reason why animal rights groups
from around the world are massing for another major push to stop the
controversial seal hunt once and for all.

In the coming days, Canadians will see the first signs of the drive:

First, major protests are planned on Tuesday in Toronto, Ottawa,
Halifax, Vancouver and 40 other cities around the world. Organizers are
calling the protests the International Day of Action, with the aim of
letting the Canadian government know the depth of their opposition to
the hunt.

The Toronto protest will be held at noon at Dundas Square at the
intersection of Yonge and Dundas streets.

Second, and potentially the most dramatic, environmental and animal
protection groups, such as humane societies, in the U.S. and Europe are
launching a boycott of all Canadian seafood. Boycott organizers will
start television, radio and newspaper advertisements "the day the first
seal is killed" in Atlantic Canada.

Canada exports more than $3 billion worth of seafood annually to the
U.S. In comparison, the seal hunt generated barely $16 million in 2004.

Third, IFAW, the Massachusetts-based group which got its start in
Canada fighting the seal hunt, will once again helicopter journalists,
foreign politicians and anti-seal activists to the ice flows to watch
the hunt up close.

Such action in the 1970s and 1980s, when movie starlets such as Brigit
Bardot, came to the ice flows off Newfoundland, led to a European ban
on the pelts of harp seals.

IFAW says that starting the week of March 21, reporters will arrive
from Britain, Europe, Australia, Mexico and other countries to cover
the hunt.

Noticeably missing, though, are many Canadian journalists.

Fourth, a major Internet campaign is underway to recruit new people to
the anti-sealing side, and to re-energize those who had forgotten the
hunt was even still going on.

In Canada, the debate over the seal hunt has raged for decades. The
arguments on both sides are well-known — and well articulated.

Those opposed say the entire hunt amounts to a brutal slaughter, with
seals being skinned alive in many cases. They also say the Liberal
government is afraid to stop the hunt because it might jeopardize seats
in Parliament the Liberals now hold in Newfoundland and elsewhere in
Atlantic Canada.

Those supporting the hunt, including the Canadian government, contend
the hunt is conducted humanely and is tightly regulated. Ottawa says
the harp seal herd is estimated at about 5 million animals, about the
highest level recorded and triple the number in the 1970s. Supporters
also note the hunt provides much needed money for poor fishing families
in eastern Canada.

With so much activity about to start on the anti-hunt side, Ottawa is
suddenly taking notice. Late this week it started its own publicity
drive, contacting news organizations to talk about the "myth and
realities" of the hunt.

They will have to work hard because the stakes are extremely high this
year.

That's because a boycott of Canadian seafood by Americans and
Europeans, even if only partly successful, could be an economic
disaster for Canada.

Such an outcome isn't what the activists want, though. What they want
is for Ottawa — and all Canadians — to ask one simple question: Isn't
it time for Canada to rethink this entire issue.

12 mars 2005