According to the International Fund for Animal Welfare, Canada's seal hunt is the largest slaughter of marine mammals in the world. An independent team of veterinarians who observed a seal hunt concluded that up to 42 percent of the seals examined may have been skinned alive.
"The seal hunt is cruel and unnecessary. The Marine Mammal Protection Act bans the import of any seal products into the U.S. and the European Union banned the sale of seal skins more than a decade ago, yet the commercial seal hunt continues in Canada aided by government subsidies," said Senator Collins.
The Senators wrote in their letter to President Bush, "The unconscionable clubbing of baby seals and the skinning of live seals cannot be defended or justified, and Canada should end it just as we ended the Alaska seal hunt over 20 years ago."
Senator Collins, earlier this year, also cosponsored a Senate resolution that urged the Government of Canada to stop the seal hunt season. The resolution specifically encouraged a prohibition of seal hunting off Canada's east coast. The seal hunt is usually conducted by clubbing, hooking, or shooting the animals.
The commercial hunt for harp and hooded seals is not conducted by the indigenous people of Canada, it is a commercial slaughter carried out by nonnative people seeking seal fur, oil, and penises (used as aphrodisiacs in some Asian markets). In February 2003, the Ministry of Fisheries and Oceans in Canada authorized the highest quota for harp seals in Canadian history, allowing nearly 1,000,000 seals to be killed over a 3-year period. According to the U.S. Humane Society, this hunt is supported annually by millions of dollars of subsidies to the sealing industry from the Canadian Government.
"Few would argue that this industry still serves a legitimate purpose," wrote the Senators "These subsidies facilitate the killing of animals for their skin and have extended the life of an industry that has ceased to exist in most developed countries."
Seal pups can be legally hunted in Canada as soon as they have begun to molt their white coats at approximately 12 days of age. 97 percent of the seals culled in the 2003 slaughter were pups between just 12 days and 12 weeks of age, most of which had not yet eaten their first solid meal or learned to swim. Many seals are injured in the course of the hunt, but escape beneath the ice where they die slowly and are never recovered, and these seals are not counted in official kill statistics, making the actual kill level far higher than the level that is reported.
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