Canada to cull 275 000 seals

[wisp]

[QUOTE][Ottawa - Canada on Monday set a limit for its annual seal harvest this year of 275 000 harp seals, and announced new rules to make the slaughter less cruel as well as curb international protests over the hunt.

The quota includes allocations of 2 000 seals for personal use and almost 5 000 seals for aboriginal hunters, as well as 16 000 seals carried over from last year for commercial fleets that did not capture their 2007 quota, fisheries officials said.

As well, Canada has adopted recommendations of the Independent Veterinarians Working Group to "ensure beyond any possible doubt that a seal is dead before it's skinned", said fisheries spokesperson Phil Jenkins.

Its implementation comes just as the European Union weighs a ban on seal imports that could devastate the industry, but Jenkins denies being pushed into adopting the stricter killing method.

Rather, he said it took three years of consultations with sealers to vet the regulations, which start this year as a condition of holding a seal hunting license, and will appear in marine mammal regulations in 2009.

The new rules require hunters to check an animal's pupils for a blinking reflex, and to slit its main arteries under its flippers, after striking or shooting a seal.

Controversial hunt

"In almost all cases, the first strike of a hakapik (club) or a shot of a rifle is enough. But we want to make sure (it's dead)," Jenkins said.

In recent years, demonstrators in Europe and North America have denounced the "cruelty" of seal hunting.

The Dalai Lama, Paul McCartney, French film legend Brigitte Bardot, actors Kim Bassinger, Juliette Binoche and Richard Dean Anderson, and Canadian-born actress and former Playboy model Pamela Anderson, among many others, have campaigned against the hunt.

A Connecticut businesswoman even offered sealers $16m - the estimated value of commercial seal meat and pelts for thousands of local fisherman - to end a controversial hunt.

And each year, animal rights groups have been out in force, stripping naked in front of parliament, dousing themselves in red paint to protest the seal hunt and holding press conferences with photos of hunters clubbing fluffy white seal cubs.

Canada banned the killing of the youngest seals, less than 12 days old, in 1987 amid criticisms and threats of European boycotts that pushed the industry to the brink of collapse.

Since then, the protests largely disappeared. But Canada awoke the wrath of activists in 2003 by approving a three-year cull of about 975 000 seals after estimating their population had ballooned - now at 5.5 million, nearly triple the number in the 1970s.

Hunt 'poses no threat'

This coincided with the opening of new markets in China and Russia.

Belgium and the Netherlands have since banned imports of seal products, and last month, Germany proposed its own ban.

But Ottawa maintains the hunt poses no threat to the harp seal population, and insists the commercial cull is an economic mainstay of its Atlantic Coast communities.

The opening of the hunt, which usually kicks off in late March or April in the southern Gulf of St Lawrence, has not yet been announced.


/QUOTE]
http://www.news24.com/News24/Technol...285757,00.html

F/ckin terrible news ...how can u look in to those big eyes and then kill it, words fail

[BlackMage]

Richard Dean Anderson...among many others, (has) campaigned against the hunt.

Hey if MacGyver is against it, so am I.

Anyway, this stuff is terrible, is seal-meat really necessary for Human survival? Especially when the killing is so cruel.
This is right up there with shark-fin soup.

Make sure the thing is dead before its skinned? My Gods,man....

Im no Hippie- but there are limits to what man must be allowed to do- Especially when its based on profit and greed.

[Gammaray]

I can see the headlines: 'Seal skin exports in Canada up by 50% ...'

[Toi]

I ****ing hate news like this, just ****ed up my entire day. And now some poor retarded dumb ass on the road has to pay.

[Kraken]

Hang on... since when do seal populations need to be "culled"? It's not like more seals are much of a threat... let nature take it's course.

Of course, it's [Edit: *probably*] really just a wad of bull**** to kill loads of seals and get their meat.

[ShadowMaster]

Hang on... since when do seal populations need to be "culled"? It's not like more seals are much of a threat... let nature take it's course.

Of course, it's [Edit: *probably*] really just a wad of bull**** to kill loads of seals and get their meat.

Humans have messed up a lot of stuff, like depleting fish stocks, on which seals feed. Therefore to maintain the balance of nature, seals have to be culled to prevent them taking the fish down with them. Just like elephants need to be culled (if there is no alternative) to prevent them taking the rest of the park down with them.

But as you said it's probably just a bunch of nonsense to allow them to hunt seals.

Also, does anyone know if Canada is against the hunting of whales?
So I can cry hypocrite.

[general_koffi]

Also, does anyone know if Canada is against the hunting of whales?
So I can cry hypocrite.

Does anyone know if all of the above posters are against the killing of any mammal? Or where do we draw the line here?

I have a hard time believing you're all vegans.

[Pr0wl1ng_PaPayA]

We draw the line at cruel and inhumane killing methods, like, ummm CLUBBING a seal to death.

[ShadowMaster]

Actually I have nothing against killing animals, but it must be done humanely, quickly and mustn't drive the species or even a colony to extinction.

People complain seals are cute, but so are piglets and I don't see you complaining about the killing of pigs.

Also is ANY meat necessary for human survival?

[wisp]

Hang on... since when do seal populations need to be "culled"? It's not like more seals are much of a threat... let nature take it's course.

That would be the ideal but again mankind has stuffed that one up, by decreasing the numbers of the natrural enemies of the seal namely the polar bear (due to shrinking ice caused by global warming) and the shark (because we are scared of it so we kill it).

Without these natural enemies the population is bound to explode. as the seal and the man "fight" for the same food source namely fish and man unfortunately being the dominant species mankind has a simple answer to the problem -kill the competition

so we are the root cause of the problem again, but as we do nothing to try and solve these problems by either protecting and stop killing sharks or trying to stop global warming to bring the polar bears back to this area this same secenario will repeat it's self time and again.

[Coolhand]

So we can raise cows and chickens by force and slaughter them by the millions each day because they aren't cute like seals are?

Either it's alright to kill any animal for food/resources or it's not alright to kill any, just because you like one over the other.

Grow the **** up people and GET ****ING EDUCATED!

In 2005, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) commissioned the Independent Veterinarians Working Group Report. With reference to video evidence, the report states: "Perception of the seal hunt seems to be based largely on emotion, and on visual images that are often difficult even for experienced observers to interpret with certainty. While a hakapik strike on the skull of a seal appears brutal, it is humane if it achieves rapid, irreversible loss of consciousness leading to death."

[Toi]

^^ Thanks for telling us what we already know dip****. We came to the conclusion in the whaling thread that we don't know where to draw the line between what's ok to slaughter and what’s not.

My opinion is this: if it's for food (not for a jacket) that is required then by all means go ahead and do it. If it's not, then leave the animal the **** alone.

And BTW so what if I think that a seal is cuter than a ****ing cow? Am I not allowed to? I feel sorry for cows too but I have to like, ****ing eat you know.

People have always and will always be controlled by their emotions, it's what makes us human. Deal with it.

In 2005, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) commissioned the Independent Veterinarians Working Group Report. With reference to video evidence, the report states: "Perception of the seal hunt seems to be based largely on emotion, and on visual images that are often difficult even for experienced observers to interpret with certainty. While a hakapik strike on the skull of a seal appears brutal, it is humane if it achieves rapid, irreversible loss of consciousness leading to death."

It happens all the time when a seal is hit on the head and doesn't die a sudden death, just bleeds and suffers to death.

[wisp]

People have always and will always be controlled by their emotions, it's what makes us human. Deal with it.

word Leon

[Nferno]

And in other related news:

Tiger numbers 'halve in 25 years'

The WWF said there were an estimated 3,500 tigers left
The world's tiger population may have halved in the past quarter of a century, conservationists from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) have warned.
The WWF told a conference in Stockholm there might be only 3,500 tigers left, and that one sub-species, the South China Tiger, could soon be extinct.

Chinese demand for tiger body parts - used in traditional medicine - was described as one of the main threats.

But the WWF said if proper measures were taken, tiger numbers could rise.

Conservationists have recently bought up land concessions from governments in an effort to combat the destruction of forests still inhabited by tigers.

The WWF painted also warned that the Sumatran Tiger could face extinction.

The conservation group's co-ordinator in Nepal, Bivash Pandav, said he believed there were some 3,500 tigers left in the world, compared with an estimated 5,000-7,000 in 1982.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7291122.stm

**** the whales, **** the seals. These are the most majestic animals that roam the earth and there is only about 3500 left.

[wisp]

Tiger numbers 'halve in 25 years'
**** the whales, **** the seals. These are the most majestic animals that roam the earth and there is only about 3500 left.
Today 08:07 AM

the killing of any species is a crime against nature , no one animal is more important than the other -all should be seen as equal of our protection--- don't u agree

[Toi]

^^ Yeah but the problem lies in survival. We need to eat don't you think?

[Kraken]

We're omnivores. We don't have to eat meat.

[Antimatter]

Firstly, what a bunch of hippies.

Secondly, I love meat. I love eating meat more than pretty much anything. I'll cook more meat then needed when I'm braaing so I can eat the cold leftovers the day after. I've never ordered a vegetarian meal at a restaurant, unless you include starters like garlic bread. I would pretty much be your standard vegan emo if I didn't eat meat. I think eating meat is directly proportionate to happiness.

Thirdly, what a bunch of hippies. Christ.

[george]

I think eating meat is directly proportionate to happiness.

Bacon is the essence happiness.

From the wikipedia link:

Seal meat is sold to the Asian pet food market, and used as silage for farm animals. Their blubber is used to make seal oil, which is marketed as a fish oil supplement. In 1997 their penises were priced at $25 a penis, when sold as aphrodisiacs on the Asian market.

Damn, $25 for a seal penis.

[wisp]

Firstly, what a bunch of hippies.

Secondly, I love meat. I love eating meat more than pretty much anything. I'll cook more meat then needed when I'm braaing so I can eat the cold leftovers the day after. I've never ordered a vegetarian meal at a restaurant, unless you include starters like garlic bread. I would pretty much be your standard vegan emo if I didn't eat meat. I think eating meat is directly proportionate to happiness.

Thirdly, what a bunch of hippies. Christ.

What a Jock you are