GG riles PETA and other humane societies

Bookish Agrarian wrote:

KeyStone wrote:

"Your ignorance about the commerical seal hunt is also revealed in your post as pelts are only a small portion of the hunt and much of it is in fact for the meat and other products.  But of course you can't fund raise as well without those darling little shots of white coats.   It is all about the survival of the cutest and the protection of the best fundraiser. "

 

Be against the seal hunt, or any other practice - that's your right.  Could care less, I am no fan of seal meat myself - too greasy for my tastes.  While that is your right lecturing others while standing on a steaming pile of hypocriscy is not.

I hate to jump in, because BA is consistently one of my favorite posters, but Keystone has been pretty well speaking 100% truth on the seal hunt.

I think almost every Canadian who wants to see the end of Canada's commercial seal hunt respects Canada's Inuit and their traditions (and public opinion reasearch consistently shows that is most Canadians). I know I do, I'm sure Keystone does.

The FACT is that the economic value of Canada's commercial seal hunt is almost entirely in the pelt. I don't know the exact figures (I can get them for you) but way more than 90% of the value is in the pelt, if I had to guess I'd think it's 96%+. I'm not saying no one eats seal meat, but there are no big export markets for the meat and I don't see Canadians buying it, which explains why the vast majority of seal carcasses are left on the ice to rot in Canada's commercial seal hunt. I would think the organizations opposing the hunt would probably be OK with still allowing some hunting for personal use in sealing communities after the end of commercial hunting in Atlantic Canada.

The federal government has spent millions of taxpayers dollars to develop markets for other seal products, but with little sucess. If discussion on this issue were more rational, our PM would have called it a boondoggle sometime in the 90s.

Further, as Keystone noted, the harp seals killed in Canada's commercial seal hunt are by any reasonable measure babies - they are "beaters", between 12 days (when they shed their white coat) and 3 months. At this stage of their life cycle, they have been weaned, but have yet to swim or eat solid food. Why are the babies killed? Remember, it's for the pelt and, of course, the younger the seal, the nicer the pelt is for the weird kind of person in an urban area that wants to wear dead animal.

Also, from what I understand from having talked to hunt observers, the commercial seal hunt does not occur in a way that respects the animal. It is an industrial scale activity, organized in a manner that emphasizes speed. A significant number are killed in an inhumane manner, more than you'd find in a well-run and designed slaugherhouse.

The Inuit hunt is completely different. It is primarily for ringed seals and a staple of their traditional diet. As with their tradition, the whole animal is used. I would imagine it occurs at a small scale level and the animals are killed in humane manner. I have never observed the hunt, but have talked to at least one person (a vegetarian socialist!) who did and he said it was respectful of the seal.

So I think we can see that the commercial and Inuit hunts are two different things and that to conflate them is problematic for any side of the debate to do so - as I will argue, the federal government has done in a political strategy to defend commercial hunting.

Inuit leaders have not "played along" with anything in my view. They are active in designing their own strategy -- real people, not pawns. It's hard to believe how much their voices are ignored by Europeans who claim to speak for them and know better than they do. 

Those same people would probably not agree with Inuit using plastics remind - as it is not 'traditional'.