Fabian Lodge The Green White Notley Witham Essex CM8 1ST The Canadian Ambassador Canadian Embassy London 1 October 2001 Dear Sir, I am writing to express my views on the International Fund for Animal Welfare video. I watched with disgust, but in some scenes it just made me feel physically sick, thinking of what the seals must have experienced before their death, and had to look away.
The most stomach churning of all was the fact that these were baby seals that in no way could defend themselves or get away from their killers. The more I watched the more I learnt how and why they were being slaughtered, if any reason could be used for such carnage. These seals who have know means of defending themselves, are struck down by a great club with a spike attached, and if not killed first time they will be repeatedly clobbered to death.
Stop the Seal Hunt
Seal hunt demonstrators on 17th
Stop seal hunt / Stop the seal slaughterIf this is not enough for the slayer they will torment the seal before and after the spike is driven into the head, for in one scene a baby seal was kicked again and again ahead of having the terminal blow with a baseball bat.
The young seals who have special white pelts just for a few weeks after being born, are being killed to make clothing, such as fur coats, but instead of lying on the back of the seal it is being worn by people like yourself. Seals are also hunted because money can be made from selling blubber and other parts of the seal to other countries, especially the Far East.
One of the arguments that made the original ban possible, was that the carcass was just left there on the ice and not used, that hunting just for the coat was not a valid enough reason to kill a seal. Also the price of pelts had fallen, so it was not financially viable to hunt seals. That is when the Canadian government opted to boost the industry by artificially raising the price of seal products by paying subsidies and launching a slick marketing campaign to highlight the different uses for seal products in order to dismiss the idea that seal corpses are wasted. I am positive that without the government subsidies, sealing would not be commercially viable. With all this hype the percentage are still just killed with the body just left in a blood bath on the ice.
These seal have only one destiny, if this law is removed, and that is death and if no boy else stops this, a seal will be just another one of extinct animals that you read about in textbooks. So I hope you make the right decision and keep the law from letting this harmless animal come to an end.
Yours faithfully, Ben Catlin
Eskimo Seal Hunting
English: A vest made of a couple of seals. Nors...
Comparative anatomy of an otariid seal and a phoci...