Alan Herscovici responds to Greenland's ban

[Animal 0]

Fri Jan 13, 2006

Alan Herscovici responds to Greenland's ban


January 13, 2006 Greenland bans Canadian sealskins “Everybody is
astounded that such a silly decision would be made”

SARA MINOGUE

People who work in Canada’s fur industry were surprised earlier this week to
hear news reports that Greenland has banned imports of Canadian sealskins.
On Jan. 9, Agence France-Presse reported that the Home Rule government had
forbidden its government-run tannery, Great Greenland, from buying Canadian
sealskins because they can’t tell which pelts came from animals who were clubbed
to death and skinned alive.
A spokesman for the Danish Conservative party told that news agency that it
was “unacceptable” for Canadian sealskins to “ruin the good reputation of
Greenland’s sealskins.”

Greenland’s decision came one day after the Humane Society of the United
States criticized Great Greenland’s use of Canadian sealskins, said the
Copenhagen Post.

Alan Herscovici, executive vice-president of Fur Council of Canada, was one
Canadian furrier who was taken off guard.

“Everybody is astounded that such a silly decision would be made,” Herscovici
said from his Montreal office.
According to Herscovici, the Greenland government will only hurt themselves if
they try to distance their seal hunting from images of clubbed baby seals in
Atlantic Canada.

Animal rights activists oppose all seal hunting, Herscovici said, including
seal hunts by Inuit hunters who use rifles.

If they are successful in stopping the Atlantic Canada hunt, which they
perceive as inhumane, their next target will be aboriginal hunters.

But that might not even have to happen, because Inuit hunters already suffer
every time any kind of seal hunt is attacked, because the prices go down.

“It’s all one big market,” Herscovici said, pointing out that when the
European Union banned sealskins in the 1980s, aboriginal hunters did not benefit
one bit from an exemption that allowed their pelts to continue to enter Europe.

“When the market was destroyed it was destroyed for everybody,” Herscovici
said.

“It wasn’t the ban that impacted the market, it was all the campaigning.”

Images of the Newfoundland fishers clubbing baby seals and skinning them alive
are also outdated, Herscovici said. Less than 10 per cent of Canadian sealskins
are obtained by clubbing seals, and fishers that do club animals are regulated
and studied by veterinarians.“Veterinary experts tell us that clubbing can be more humane than shooting...”
a senior official with the Department of Fisheries of Oceans wrote in an email
exchange sent to several staffers reacting to the news.
Herscovici said Inuit hunters should be careful not to believe everything that
activists say: especially the terrible things they say about Newfoundland
hunters.
Instead, he said Inuit hunters should realize that Newfoundland seal hunters
have a lot in common. Both types of hunters live close to the land, in remote
settings, and both share a respect for the environment and the animals they
kill.
“These are fishermen, these are hunters, these are not cruel people,”
Herscovici said.

In the end, seal hunters will only benefit if all sealskin producers work
together.

“It’s only when we began to build bigger markets with the bigger hunt that the
price began to improve for everybody.”

The news from Greenland comes at a time when prices for Nunavut sealskins are
still rebounding from the mid-90s low of $20 per pelt, caused by a wave of
animals rights campaigning.

Mark Downey, the CEO of the Fur Harvesters’ Auction in North Bay, Ont.
described the demand for Nunavut sealskins as “very, very strong” at the end of
2005.
At the Dec. 17 auction, buyers from around the world paid an average of $70.65
for ring sealskins, with the highest price reaching $142.50.

The Fur Harvesters’ Auction — a clearing house that sells furs from across
Canada to buyers from around the world — put 7,770 sealskins on the auction
block in 2005, 95 per cent of which came from Nunavut’s hunters. Eighty-five per
cent of the sealskins sold.
Prices were up at least 20 per cent from the 2004 auction, Downey said,
although fur harvesters won’t see this much increase in their profit. Buyers at
the auction use U.S. dollars. With the exchange rate is factored in, the prices
paid out to Canadian harvesters is only about one dollar more than 2004.

Denmark has been a major buyer in the past. In 2002, two Danes bought about
9,000 Nunavut sealskins through the Fur Harvesters’ Auction, accounting for 90
per cent of all sealskins purchased in Nunavut that year.
The seal hunt was briefly a federal election issue when Green Party leader Jim
Harris announced his party’s plan to end the Newfoundland seal hunt earlier this
month.

A Green Party organizer in Labrador resigned shortly after the announcement.

“I have put so much work personally in distancing Newfoundland from that
generic, stereotypical view [that] completely overrides the complexity of the
issue... and the economic importance and cultural importance of the hunt,”
Lori-Ann Martino told CBC News.


Salopard!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[animo-aequoanimo 0]

Plus il crie, plus il alerte la population que quelque chose d'anormal se passe peut-être. Donc, sans s'en rendre compte, ses éclats font aussi de la pub anti-fourrure.

[Animal 0]

je le souhaite !!!!!!!!!!!!