I wrote a long response to the question, but then decided it deserved its own entry, which follows, rather than simply responding in the comments. So here goes.
Even if all I was doing was “repeating what I read on the HSUS website,” that would be enough to get most people to visit the HSUS website, and maybe think about the issue themselves, and that might be enough for today.
But while I have you on the line...
...I have no problem, really, with hunting per-se, especially when hunting is a necessary aspect of survival. But that ain't what's going on out there, Tony, and you know that.
Seals are bludgeoned, skinned, and often left dying on the ice. The fur collected by the hunters/fishermen is entirely unnecessary to the survival of any human on the planet. The money acquired by seal hunters through the sale of these “furs” is miniscule compared to their regular income as fishermen, so don't even begin to give me the income argument. I don't buy it.
Perhaps I'd better put it another way, though, to capture the attention of the average hunter.
I don't exactly get excited about deer hunting, but I can see its utility. Many many dear hunters actively pursue their deer in what I would consider a humane manner. They use the hide, they eat the meat, and they respect the life and death of the deer. But if the hunters were whacking young deer--those just losing their spots, let's say--then skinning them alive and leaving them wherever they had been whacked, often still alive and in pain with no hope for mercy, then I would be calling for an end to this practice... an end to deer hunting, or at least this form of deer hunting. And I bet a lot of people would be right there with me, calling for the end. Now. Right fricking now.
No deer hunter I know would ever, ever do what I've just described. To do so would be inhumane. So I'm not saying it happens. Likely there are deer hunters who do inhumane things, but that's the fault of humanity, not of deer hunters.
When we as humans do not care for animals, we do more harm to ourselves as a whole--to humanity--than we do to the animals. I do not mean to be sentimental about the seals. I don't think calling them “baby seals” earns us much except that we will be dismissed by those who vomit at the sight of “cuteness.” I do not dispute that there will likely be plenty more seals on the same ice next year. But there is no human act that I can say is more than a few degrees of separation between me and that act. And the merciless bludgeoning of seals makes me ill in so many ways, it is difficult to know where to begin. So when the seal is bludgeoned, I'm not very far from it. My status as human is diminished. My status as caretaker of animals is diminished. I do not feel worthy to be called human unless I do something.
So I begin with this. It. Must. Stop. Until the practices of the “industry” that hunts and kills these seals is under far greater scrutiny than they are today, the practices themselves must stop.
Until they do stop, I won't be buying any Canadian seafood, and I won't be making any trips to Canada. And I encourage everyone who cares about their own humanity to at least think about how we treat animals and how that treatment effects that humanity, because mine is certainly not the last word on the subject. There is much to be said, and still much more to be done.
Blessings.
I'm listening to “Barrel of a Gun” by Guster from the album Lost and Gone Forever on .
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