READ! Massacred for Fashion - The Annual Slaughter of Seals
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Massacred for fashion - the annual slaughter of seals
by LIZ JONES -
Last updated at 23:44pm on 3rd April 2007
Peering pitifully through the slush of sea ice, the seal struggles desperately to keep its head above water. Exhausted and confused, it searches for a safe place to haul its weary body from the water.
If it can not find solid ice soon, it will slip beneath the surface and drown.
Given the fate that otherwise awaits it, that may be a blessing.
Yesterday, the world's cruellest cull once more got under way as Canadian fishermen began their annual festival of slaughter - clubbing and shooting tens of thousands of seal pups around the Gulf of St Lawrence.
Gallery: Seal culling - the shocking images
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A man bears down on one of the seals
Once again, the world will recoil in horror at the spectacle of men battering young seals to death, before skinning the still-warm bodies for the pelt that will be turned into a fashionable accessory for the unthinking or uncaring.
And this year, as these pictures show, there is a double horror. Thanks to global warming, the ice that should provide a solid base for the pups in their first few weeks of life has melted weeks early.
As a result, they are either tipped into the water when the sea swells, or fall through the gaps in the slush. There, lacking the ability to swim, they die.
It was estimated that by the end of last week more than 90 per cent of the pups born in the southern part of the gulf had perished - approximately 260,000 seals.
A bloody river cuts through the broken ice as the hunt begins
Hovering above the scene in a helicopter with a monitoring group from an American animal welfare charity, it became clear that we were watching an ecological catastrophe taking place before our eyes.
And yet still the hunters will continue with their barbaric mission, picking off every remaining pup still alive.
To help them locate the survivors, government planes will be despatched to scour the ice and, as soon as any pups are spotted, the co- ordinates will be radioed back to the coastguard, who will lead the fishing boats to the location.
Not even the destruction of the seal's habitat, it seems, can stop the wholesale slaughter.
Doomed to die: This seal pup will drown if it does not find solid ice soon
As a fashion writer who has campaigned against the resurgence of fur on the catwalk, the scenes I witnessed during my time in Canada sickened and appalled me.
I really don't know how this practice can be called a "hunt". (At least foxes can run: seal pups can't even crawl.)
And actually, when I speak to one of the fishermen, he calls it a "harvest".
"Seals are like fish," he said. "There is no difference."
This is plainly ridiculous.
Seals are intelligent, inquisitive creatures. Watch them through a hole in the ice and they do a double-take when they spot you, and return, moments later, to stare with inquisitive eyes.
One seal claws at the ice as it tries to escape -
CONTINUED FROM 1ST POST.....
Yet to the fisherman around the coast of Newfoundland, they are simply a threat to local fish stocks; a menace to be eradicated by any means possible.
I wish I could say such callous indifference was surprising. But even before I had been flown over the ice, the hypocrisy of the Canadian government had already prepared me for what lay ahead.
Before I was allowed to enter Canada, I had to sign a special visa form which stated that I would not "touch or pick up" a seal, because that would make it stressed. (I wonder what smashing its skull with a 'hakapik' - a club with a useful spike on the end - would make it?)
I also had to agree that I would not try to rescue an injured seal. (Last year, on a visit to Newfoundland to protest against the cull, Sir Paul McCartney had to return home before the killing started because he couldn't trust himself not to intervene.)
I even had to agree to keep 20 metres away from the fishermen.
I don't know who this last edict was meant to protect - them, or me?
Last year, an angry mob, made up mostly of the wives of the fishermen, attacked an animal welfare vehicle monitoring the cull and forced it off the road.
Such is local resentment towads those who publicise the slaughter that, on leaving the helicopter, I was warned to hide my notebook and camera in case locals got wind of the fact I was a journalist.
It seems our pilot had been very brave to fly us out over the ice.
Yet last week, the Canadian government was busy trying to persuade the world that the hunt was humane and necessary and sustainable.
An 11-strong delegation, headed by special ambassador Loyola Sullivan, travelled to the EU to plead their case, before turning up at Westminster to meet MPs. (Britain, unlike Italy, Belgium and Luxembourg, has yet to impose a ban on seal products.)
Sullivan was full of platitudes, stressing the hunt was no more cruel than an abattoir, and pointing out that very young seals can no longer be killed.
Although it is true that the killing of "white coats" - newborn pups with thick, white fur - has been banned since 1983, a pup can still be slaughtered when it is only 12 days old, just as it starts to moult (these are called "ragged jackets"; or when it is a "beater" (still under four weeks old and unable to swim properly).
But because the hunt is so remote, it is impossible to regulate or monitor. The atrocities that take place are almost too horrendous to document.
Although some pups are shot, the vast majority are clubbed. This is because clubbing is cheaper and doesn't spoil the quality of the pelt.
Even in good condition, a pelt is worth just $US 78 (£36). Yet so many are slaughtered that for the fishermen in Newfoundland, the annual cull nets £13 million.
Pelts are exported to Norway, Russia, China and South Korea to be made into fashion garments that are sold all over the world.
But because public hostility is growing towards the seal cull, unscrupulous dealers often deliberately mislabel seal fur, claiming it is rabbit, or even fake fur.
One thing is certain: with demand for fur of all kinds running high on the back of its renewed popularity on the catwalk, the Canadian fishermen can be sure of a vibrant market for this year's "harvest" - though with pups so few in number, the competition between fishing boats will be fierce, resulting in even more frenzied killing.
I ask the animal welfare observers accompanying me, who have witnessed such scenes many times before, to tell me which aspect of the slaughter they find most distressing.
One tells me how she has witnessed pups being dragged by hooks across the ice, and once saw a pup take 45 minutes to die after being clubbed on the head.
"She was on the ice, just gurgling and crying, and there was nothing we could do to intervene."
Another described how, when the hunt begins, the female seals all try to keep an eye on their babies until fear drives them into the water.
Once the boats have gone, they all come back onto the ice, calling for their pups.
They waddle up to the huge, steaming pile of offal that is left to rot on the ice (seal blubber is virtually worthless), and they actually sort gently through the bodies, trying to find their babies.
"The sound the mothers make is so terrible, so plaintive, it haunts you for ever," she said. Perhaps the sound of the mothers wailing should be played at the next fashion show given by the likes of Christopher Bailey at Burberry, or Julien Macdonald, or Karl Lagerfeld, or even our own Amanda Wakeley.
These designers will protest that they don't use seal fur - only silver fox or mink.
That's not the point.
By using animal fur of any kind, they make this sort of brutality acceptable and chic and normal, and lovely and desirable.
Having witnessed the seals' desperate situation first-hand, I can vouch it is no such thing. It is utterly repellent.
• For information on what you can do to stop the commercial seal hunt, visit www.protectseals.org or www.hsus.org -
i have an online gaming friend in alaska who's job is to club seals.
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If only seals know how to use guns... sigh!~ poor little creatures.~
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omg the poor baby seals.
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pretty much an oft-heard sad case of animal cruelty.
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poor thing..
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wtf
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omg... those bast@rds should be the ones getting clobbered.
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who's still buying fur coats?????!!!!!!!!
please please please. for heaven's sake. dun buy any fur related products anymore.
I'm highlighting this sentence again: "because public hostility is growing towards the seal cull, unscrupulous dealers often deliberately mislabel seal fur, claiming it is rabbit, or even fake fur."
u never know. it might be too late before u realise. -
Originally posted by carpe diem jur:
dam.... some one in sgf should do an ad like what pamala anderson did
who's still buying fur coats?????!!!!!!!!
please please please. for heaven's sake. dun buy any fur related products anymore.
I'm highlighting this sentence again:[b] "because public hostility is growing towards the seal cull, unscrupulous dealers often deliberately mislabel seal fur, claiming it is rabbit, or even fake fur."
u never know. it might be too late before u realise.
[/b]
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bumpz