The Secret of NIMH

Vivisection is a Trick

They Make Money – We Get Sick

The Animal Defense and Anti-Vivisection Society of BC is launching a series of campaigns against UBC’s animal testing programs:

“Tucked away somewhere on UBC’s south campus is the euphemistically called “Animal Care Center” (ACC), the current locus of animal experimentation at the university. Unbeknownst to most students and Vancouver residents, UBC is one of the largest bio-medical campuses in the country. The ACC annually distributes some 100,000 animals, both large and small, to dozens of UBC affiliated-research projects. UBC
researchers in Vancouver and in other UBC-affiliated facilities around Canada have been routinely experimenting on animals, including pigs, rats, cats, and non-human primates. For example, UBC researchers have been involved in: cutting lesions into cats’ brains to determine the effects on the cats’ ability to step over objects; exposing guinea pigs to smoking to assess damage to lung tissue; and using pigs in a host of research programs.”

Please join the AD-AV in helping liberate these unwilling subjects. All types of people are needed in this quest.

Over 100 million animals are killed in labs a year.

This is not an either/or issue. We can all be happy, healthy, and live in harmony. Learn more about it through the AD-AV.

Meeting: Thursday, February 11, 6:30-8:30 PM @ Society for Promoting Environmental Conservation 2150 Maple Street (at corner of 6th & Maple. 2 blocks west of Burrard St.), Vancouver

Here are some of the AD-AV’s ideas:

• Initiating whistler-blower campaigns to encourage those working within UBC research facilities to come forward with information
• Gathering more information about UBC’s research on animals programs
• Hosting a debate on the UBC campus between leading animal right advocates and UBC researchers
• Developing a state-of-the-art website to help educate the public about UBC’s research programs, highlight the grim realities or experimentation on animals, and empowering others to take action
• Coordinating media events to put the spotlight on UBC

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The Secret of NIMH is a forgotten childhood fave of many 80s kids, but others may not be familiar with it because it was released at the same time as ET. Watching it again, I’d forgotten that the “Secret” of NIMH was the animal cruelty. The movie was produced at a time when these practices were a secret to most people; they are no longer a secret but still taking place – why?

There is powerful segment about animal testing at around the 5:50 mark:

*NIMH stands for the National Institute of Mental Health

Consider the irony – attempting to discover the secrets of well being by performing violent, heartless experiments on sentient beings. Could anything be further from mental wellness?

Burned Alive to Protest Skinned Alive

Daniel Schaull set himself on fire yesterday in Portland, Oregon, outside Ungar Furs in protest of their cruelty to animals.

A man who set himself on fire in downtown Portland earlier today died this evening at Legacy Emanuel Hospital and Health Center, the Portland Fire Bureau reported.

Authorities are trying to figure out why the man, identified as 26-year-old Daniel Shaull, would burn himself in such a terrifying manner. The incident occurred near a fur store that has been the subject of numerous protests.

“It gets to your mind …,” said Mike Cheema, who owns the nearby India Chaat House food cart. Cheema added that people in the area were screaming and scared.

Firefighters responded to a call about 11:10 a.m., Simmons said. They found the man unconscious with serious burns, according to Lt. Damon Simmons, a fire bureau spokesman. .

Cheema said that after setting himself ablaze, the man tried to enter Nicholas Ungar Furs  at 1137 S.W. Yamhill St. He said the man also had something in his hands, but could not see what it was.

Cheema said a police officer was at the stoplight at Southwest 12th Street and Yamhill Street when the incident occurred and immediately responded.

By the time firefighters arrived, two police officers and bystanders had already put out the flames, Simmons said.

A short time later, charred materials remained on the ground around the building, including a shoe, but most were unidentifiable. Yellow police tape surrounded the scene.

The fur store has been the site of frequent animal-rights protests in the past and Cheema said the man was yelling something about the world ending and animals dying.

“People always come every day protesting,” Cheema said. “They’ve done some extreme things.”

Cheema said protesters have thrown red paint and painted the windows of the store.

Matt Rossell, spokesman for In Defense of Animals, said his group has not protested at the store, but he knows others continue to do so.

He said he was unaware of the event, but that “it seems extremely strange.”

Jessica Moody works on the fifth floor of Northwestern Mutual at 1221 S.W. Yamhill St.  and said she hadn’t seen any protesters for a couple weeks, though they used to come every day. She was walking back from lunch when she saw the aftermath.

“They’ve never done anything crazy,” she said.

Assuming there is some level of mental illness present in this young man to drive him to such extreme measures, millions back his cause with other extreme behavior. Every Friday in Vancouver, prostesters stand in front of the Fairmont Hotel to express dissent towards Snowflake Furs, and other more daring activists have performed raids on fur farms to set free animals waiting to be anally and vaginally electrocuted, then skinned alive.

As the truth about the bloody fur industry spreads, the fur industry is attempting to fight back with a ludicrous fur campaign entitled: “Fur Is Green”.

But the more accurate: Cruelty Is Not Green explains the opposite:

The latest gimmick of the marketers of fur and fur-trimmed products, is claiming their products of cruelty to be “green”, “ecological”, or “environmental”. Marketers of fur products have always compared the biodegradation of fur to only fake fur. It is important to realize that the alternative to fur is any and every fabric and textile there is. Fur is no better than the many fabrics out there that also decompose easily. The washing, drying, tanning, dyeing, and trimming of fur require extensive chemical treatment. The trapping and removing of millions of wildlife from our environment is disruptive to our eco-system. And there is certainly nothing natural or green about cruelly ripping the skins off the animals’ backs. Wikipedia Encyclopedia defines an “eco-system” quite appropriately as:  “The interconnectedness of organisms with each other and their environment”. Further, it wisely points out that “living creatures are a key component of any eco-system”. The fur trade traps a million of Canada’s wildlife every year from our eco-system for neeless fur products, dictated by ever-changing design trends. These animals are not chosen because they are surplus, weak, or diseased. They are killed because they happen to be the 10 or 12 species that have nice, thick fur out of an estimated 140,000 species of animals in Canada. It is becoming widely understood just how vital a role fur-bearing an other animals can play in our eco-system, and how we cannot reasonably expect to be able to continue to deliberately interfere with the intricacies of their population in such significant ways as commercial fur trapping without expecting far-reaching and potentially serious consequences.

Oh No They Di’nt

Flash*Veg*News

*Dawn of a New SCAM!

Dawn liquid dishwashing detergent is trying to promote themselves as animal saviors with their campaign featuring oil-covered animals being washed by Dawn soap. How stupid does Dawn think we are? Firstly, if you were going to wash a delicate animal, wouldn’t you use some… oh… animal shampoo – something that wouldn’t singe their eyeballs? Dawn is just another toxic, TESTED on ANIMALS product. Dawn is grease cutting, bla bla bla. Want to know what’s in Dawn? They won’t tell you. Go to their website. They will direct you to a page that tells you what might be in a dish soap (?) Madness. Even on their label, they leave out certain ingredients as “confidential”. But the epitome of Dawn’s hypocrisy is that they are owned by our most hated Procter & Gamble – some of the world’s worst animal testers. Dawn is killing animals behind the scenes to build an ad campaign based around the false persona of being animal lovers.

*Dumbest “Celeb” in Hollywood Gets Dumber

Audrina Patridge is one of those right-place-at-the-right-time celebrities. She lived in Lauren Conrad’s apartment complex during the beginning of The Hills and was just tanned and booby enough to fit in. Audrina, otherwise known as Ceiling Eyes for her vapid stare, tries to dress rock n’ roll, and apparently she thinks this look is encapsulated by a rodeo T.

Ceiling spends SO much time trying to be the nice one on The Hills, then goes and wears a shirt depicting animals who bred to be bullied..? This fashion statement shows a level of ignorance beyond Ceiling’s devoted years as JBob’s Uchitel.

*Smokin’ Hot Royal Chooses Non-Ethical Sizzle

It hurts my heart to have to criticize my beloved Prince William. When Princess Diana died, I devoted a page to him in my “Nothing” book (scrap book), using a prince and princess sticker to illustrate our eventual happiness together, long blond braided hair flowing past my kneecaps. William is so dreamy and educated and gallant… so why is he frying up little… wtf are those poor things a’sizzlin on the grill? Obviously William grew up with a traditional English diet, but given his copious charity work and knightly manner you would think he would at some point question who he was eating. How the animals may have been raised. How they suffered. How they were slaughtered. Maybe one day, he will extend his peacekeeping past the human race.

*Crazy Bag Lady Kidnaps Angelina Jolie’s Kids

Um, hi, Angelina’s stylist? Didn’t you get the memo? NO ONE wears paper bags anymore.

When you have a Titanic of staff members at your beck and call, you would think that one of them might remember your cloth grocery bags. You have a world of children to impress upon, Miss Pretty.

Unrelated… *Why do they dress Shiloh so butch all the time? Girl’s going to need transformative gender surgery by 10.

Top 3 It Girls…

…Who Can Do No Wrong!

1. Taylor Swift

Taylor Not-Too-Swift may be the number one selling whatever on the planet right now for her country-pop-blah, but is she really the stepped-on-kitten everyone is making her out to be after the Kanye debacle?

“Swift Pick. In this business, you’ve got to be decisive. So I choose milk. Some* studies suggest that teens who choose milk instead of sugary drinks tend to be leaner and the protein helps build muscle. So eat right, exercise and drink 3 glasses of lowfat or fat free milk a day. Music to my ears.”

*…Other studies show that the vast majority of adults are lactose intolerant - dairy contributing to eczema, acne, anemia, arthritis, ADD, fibromyalgia, headaches, heartburn, indigestion, IBS, joint pain, osteoporosis, allergies, obesity, heart disease, diabetes, autism, Chron’s disease, breast cancer, and prostate cancer (!)

Factory farmed milk contains dioxin – one of the most toxic substances in the world, and when you digest dairy, you’re also digesting all the anti-biotics, growth hormones (if you’re American), pesticides, and steroids that the cows are ingesting. The bovine growth hormone, legal in the US, makes cows produce ten times the milk they normally would, causing bleeding and infections of the cows’ udders. Not to mention the constant pain and grieving the cows endure being kept perpetually pregnant, having their babies ripped away from them (who they would normally form longterm to lifelong relationships with), and having their sensitive udders hooked into a machine all day.

Can we give a major Boo-Urns to Taylor Swift for her choice of endorsement here?

If milk farmers didn’t spend millions of dollars a year promoting their products the public might be able to learn about the diseases caused by milk, but instead Not-Too-Swift chooses to reap the profits by diseasing millions of people.

2. Sarah Jessica Parker

Chix love to live vicariously through SJP, whether on the small screen or the big screen. But is Carrie really the Manolo hero Sex In the City makes her out to be?

We are calling you out, Carrie Bradshaw, on your failure to properly research the product you’ve chosen to represent. Garnier is owned by l’Oreal, and l’Oreal TESTS ON ANIMALS. This means that to have photoshopped lucious locks like Carrie’s, you would be paying for a product that practises the Draze test, a procedure in which toxic chemicals are dumped into the eyes of animals while their heads are kept in restraints (their necks often snapping as they try to escape), and you would also be paying for tests that pump chemicals into the stomachs of animals (a hole sometimes cut in their throats) to see how many chemicals the animal can ingest before dying. We’re talking mice, rabbits, cats, dogs, and sometimes primates.

Fuck Garnier and fuck SJP’s lack of judgement here. She’s smarter than this.

Try Naturcolor instead: all natural and not tested on our friends.

3. Rihanna

Poor Rihanna. She got hit in the face pretty bad by her ex, Chris Beat-Her-Down Brown. Rihanna would never hurt anyone. Directly. She would only endorse the unnecessary deaths of millions of animals if they paid her the right price.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but did Chris Beat-Her-Down Brown pour chemicals into Rhianna’s eyes until she became blind? Did Chris-Beat-Her-Down Brown keep Rihanna in intense confinement during the entire course of their relationship? Did he hack muscle tissue off Rihanna’s thighs to test his new cologne on? Brutal humor here, but am I at least proving a point?

Pop sensation, Rihanna, is fueling the multi-billion dollar industry of animal testing and encouraging millions of teens and tweens around the world to jump on board in supporting this archaic, horrific business.

As cutting edge as Rihanna is supposed to be, she is not the voice of the future, but the voice of the past.

Boycott all Procter & Gamble products and Boycott Cover Girl and tell Rhianna what you think of her lack of compassion. Boycott abuse to humans AND animals.

Oswiecim

These Little Piggies Didn’t Get to Go Home

Unlike Allister, these pigs never had a home and are most likely leaving the factory farm they’ve suffered in their entire lives to be crammed inside a truck (sometimes without food or water for up to 3 or 4 days), and left at the slaughter house.

I watched these pigs for a moment on the Highway 1 struggling for space in this crammed truck bed on the way to their deaths, then pressed an “Even if You Like Meat…” pamphlet against the window as I passed. But we are all so deeply embedded in the chain, aren’t we? From the truck drivers who need to pay their bills, to those of us veggies who come up a little short on rent and end up serving chicken at a wedding banquet… And if you speak up too loudly about the violence, you just might lose your job.

But the consumer choices we make on a daily basis do matter. So do the letters we send, the demos we attend, the alternatives to old patterns we dream up, and the information we share.

Tempeh Bacon

Tempeh Bacon Recipe

• 3 Tbs. Bragg’s liquid aminos or soy sauce
• 1/3 cup apple cider
• 1 tsp. tomato paste
• 1/4 tsp. liquid smoke
• 1 8-ounce package tempeh
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 Tbs. peanut oil or vegetable oil

1. To make the marinade combine the soy sauce, cider, tomato paste and liquid smoke in a wide, shallow bowl or pan and mix with a fork until the tomato paste is fully dissolved.
2. Cut the tempeh into thin strips (less than 1/4 inch thick) lengthwise. You should be able to get about 12 strips. Rub the strips with the crushed garlic, then toss the garlic cloves into the marinade. Submerge the tempeh strips in the marinade and let sit, for at least an hour and up to overnight. After marinating, discard the garlic.
3. Heat the oil in an 11 or 12 inch skillet over medium heat. Add the tempeh strips and cook for 4 minutes on one side; the bottom should be nicely browned. Flip the strips over and pour the remainder of the marinade over them. If there isn’t much marinade left add a splash of water. Cover and let cook for 3 more minutes, or until the liquid is absorbed. Uncover and check for doneness; if necessary keep cooking uncovered until all sides are nicely browned. Remove from heat and serve.
   

   

   Once intended for Polish Jewish inmates, P is now for pig.

Storytime

The Girl In The Roses

With a smog headache, Edie sits in her cage on the corner of Hollywood and Vine, her knees hugged tightly up against the metal, the chemical-hot Los Angeles sunshine emanating down on her a therapeutic warmth like pill-induced sleep. In the strapless white cotton ball dress Edie made herself, crisscrossed now with cage rust, she calmly sweats.

‘Isn’t that Edie Stall?’ a Gap-dunked, still-faced stage mother and her mini-me approach the cage. ‘Excuse me, are you Edie Stall?’ she asks.

‘The Girl in the Roses!’ the little girl says, a thin orange layer of spray-tan coating the perfection of her John Benet skin.

They often refer to Edie as this: The Girl In The Roses. From the movie in which Edie bathed in roses with roses on her nipples, a hallucinogenic kaleidoscope of roses sprinkling down on her in the fantasy of the horny neighbor father. The movie is why Edie can afford to sit here in the middle of the day inside the cage interrupting the paths of people who don’t have time to think, who can’t afford to. She won’t say problem, but the trouble with having time to think is that it becomes hard to communicate with those who don’t have the time to.

‘Yes, hi. I’m Edie,’ she makes the motion to extend her hand and it bumps against the cage metal. ‘Oh. Right. I forgot. I can’t shake your hand. I can’t move past the boundaries of this cage. Can’t interact with other life because…’

‘Are you with PETA?’ the mother cuts in. She has an ‘easy’ haircut and a Botox-bloated string-pulled face like  a marionette. ‘Because PETA are a bunch of hypocrites who put dogs in freezers…’

‘I’m not with anyone,’ says Edie. ‘I’m here trying to show people about the food they eat. About how it ‘lives’ ,’ her knuckles bang the roof of the cage in her attempt to do air quotes.

Along the boulevard, cars sporadically honk at Edie in passing, unable to discern exactly who she is or what she’s doing, but sensing disruption and wanting to be a part of it.

‘I guess you can’t sign autographs from in there,’ the woman taps her acrylic nail on the cage. ‘I mean, I’d tip you or donate or whatever you call it, but you have no jar…’

‘There’s a basket of flyers beside the cage,’ Edie says. ‘I’d pass you one but…’

‘-I get it,’ the woman says.

‘Why’s she in a cage?’ the little girl asks as her mother herds her away.

In the exhausted midday heat, Edie’s head is floating away like a metallic KFC wrapper in the wind. She wouldn’t mind that bath of roses now.

‘This a magic trick or somethin?’ some guys in baby blue sideways caps and matching pinneys approach. ‘Aren’t you hot in there? I mean you’re obviously hot, but…’

Edie knows she has Barbie appeal. Her Timotei-blonde hair thick like a horse tail, her teeth denture perfect, her eyes as blue as gum. But Edie has never understood why people value blonde hair and blue eyes so much, why they value the recessive genes – the ones more likely to disappear. The bitchy girls in high school used to call her Smushed Barbie Head (the unfortunate fate that befell those Barbies whose heads had popped off – attempts to smush their severed heads back onto their plastic necks failing to uncave their features so that they never looked quite the same again.) Edie thinks it’s funny, how much people have to say about the way she looks, but as long as they’re looking it’s one step closer to listening.

‘I’m dehydrated,’ Edie tells the guys. ‘Overheated. Cramped. Stir-crazy. ‘But mostly I’m lonely. I’m frustrated. I’m sad. I’d peck myself to death if they hadn’t chopped off my beak.’

‘Girl, you whack,’ the baby blue melato guy chuckles. ‘Damn fine, but whack.’

‘Aren’t you famous and shit?’ one guy in a baby blue wifebeater pipes in. ‘Why don’t you go lay out by your pool or some shit? Get one of your assistants to do this shit for you?’

‘Go-Go, Go Vegan!’ a guy with a fuchsia faux-hawk leans out of his passing car to yell, grasping the  Chicken Woman concept.

‘You want some help outta there?’ the melato guy asks, his gold chains appearing filled with chocolate.

”I would love to get out of here,’ Edie says, almost in tears. ‘But then there would be no hot wings or drumsticks or Mcnuggets….’

‘Okay…’ the guys laugh. ‘So you’re trying to tell us not to eat chicken.’

‘I would never tell you not to eat me,’ Edie tells the guys. ‘But I am here to remind you of the possibility of free-range to begin with…’

‘She said eat me,’ the guy with the shelf-straight baby blue cap laughs.

‘There are flyers beside the…’ Edie says as they walk away, an imprint of the square caging leaving perfect quadratic welts along her butt like she’s not part chicken, but part rubix cube.

‘Yo, eat this bitch,’ she hears one of the guys joke to his friends down the street.

‘I don’t want any, lady!’ A man speeds past honking his Hummer, what he doesn’t want any of, a mystery to him as well as Edie – at 80 miles an hour, Edie could very well look like a caged foetus.

Her neck beginning to ache from being arched over, the cage meant for a small dog, blood begins to gather in Edie’s forehead. Two more hours.

Edie thought about posing naked for PETA. She thought about taking a bucket of red paint with her to the Oscars. But those things – while they may have done something for animal rights – would do nothing for Edie.

On Tuesday, she took her electric guitar and synthesizer to the Wet Grind and beat six white pillowcases full of red feathers with a baseball bat to a song she’d written called: ‘You Say Their Eyes Aren’t Like Your Dog’s.’ The previous week, she’d been unable to sleep without awakening to the feeling of her head being bashed in with a hakapik like the baby Canadian Harp Seals she’d been seeing pictures of. As the red feathers wafted down into the crowd (her performance – Edie felt – better than any of that polished crap she’d given MGM), half the audience stood up and left the bar. The other drunker half stayed, begging Edie: ‘show us your tits!’ They’d probably never seen a seal in their lives. Probably thought Canada was in New Mexico.

‘So, Edie – what’s up with the cage?’ a one eyed man with a large camera perched on his shoulder approaches Edie, his other eye through the lense, recording her. ‘TMZ,’ he says. Another man comes to stand in front of him with a mic.

‘We’re here with Edie Stall on Hollywood Boulevard,’ the man says  into a microphone. ‘Edie, would you like to explain to our viewers what you’re doing here today?’

TMZ is a toss up. They might put Edie on tomorrow’s Nip-Slip list, and yet they have the most traffic of any gossip site on the net. Plus, it’s not like she can run…

‘Life!’ Edie says, balled up inside the cage, her face squished between her knees.  ‘We need to start examining the systematic, unquestioned daily slaughter of edible life.’

The gimmicky TMZ headline materializes in her head as she says it: ‘Edible Edie’. Damn.

‘You have a key, right?’ the cameraman leans down to whisper to Edie, the camera undoubtedly still on. ‘You’re looking a little dehydrated in there, Edie.’

‘No,’ Edie says. ‘You have the key.’

The interviewer calls her ‘cooky’ to the camera, then goes on to make some Finger Lickin’ jokes.

Cooky. That Edie’s feet are not roller-balls welded to a metallic track between the Beverly Centre, Starbucks, the Ivy, and Les Deux. Cooky that Edie is not dancing inside the cage in a thong.

Edie wishes she could go to Supercuts after this and have a girl with a holster of scissors chop off all her hair, but her hair is her Flamethrower Chicken Sandwich. Her starlet pheromones her twelve piece bucket. Sweat runs like grease down Edie’s back in the relentless sun.

‘Someone get that girl out of that cage!’ Edie hears as her vision dissects into a dark hexagonal blur. ‘Get her out of there!’ Edie hears from the encircling crowd, her pain feathering down like rose petals.

The Moral Progress Of A Nation

…can be determined by the way it treats its animals”

Mahatma Gandhi

The Canadian Seal Hunt

Canada’s annual commercial seal hunt is the largest slaughter of marine mammals on the planet. 275,000 will be killed this spring.

Isn’t it illegal to kill baby seals now?

Nope. It’s only illegal to kill baby seals under the age of 11 days old, when they are known as “whitecoats”. At 12 days of age or so, the pups begin to lose their white fur – like the one in the photo to the right, who has shed the white fur on the lower half of its body – and it becomes legal to kill them. For the last ten years or so, 95% of the seals killed during the commercial hunt have been “beaters”–seals between 12 days and 3 months old. Last year in 2007, the percentage was 98%. Sealers prefer to kill these young seals because their pelts fetch the highest prices.

Do native people depend on the hunt to survive?

Not at all. There are no Inuit involved in the commercial seal hunt. In fact, the species of seal targeted during the hunt is known as the harp seal. About 325,000 are killed every March and April. The Inuit favour adult ring seals, and kill only about 10,000 annually.

A letter from Arnaituk M. Tarkirk, an Inuit man from Kuujjuak, Quebec:

We have been hearing all about the European vote to ban the importation of seal products from the so-called seal hunt.

I am an Inuk and I would like to say what I think about this.

Peter Ittinuur, Northwest Territory MP, has been saying that this vote will put a lot of Inuit on welfare. This is stupid. The money from the hunt goes to Norway mostly and has nothing to do with the Inuit.

We are skillful hunters who hunt adult animals for food, That is not the same as bashing a pup, which can’t move, over the head.

In fact, if the seal hunt stopped, we would benefit the most. There would be 180,000 more seals left for us to eat when they are a few years older, and also people would not have such an aversion to sealskin products as they have after seeing the way they kill the pups, so craft work made with adult seals would be more popular.

The Hudson Bay Company and the government are just using the Inuit to further their own purposes. I am surprised Peter Ittinuur, whom I know, could allow himself to be used like that. I know people who are against the seal hunt, and they are not against the Inuit.

I am an Inuk, and I oppose the seal hunt.

The Canadian government maintains that the hunt is humane. Is this true?

No. Seals are smashed over the head with a tool known as the hakapik (a club with a large metal spike attached) or shot with a rifle. The animals are then dragged across the ice and skinned, often while still alive. Sealers are competing for a limited number of seals in a limited amount of time, so they work quickly to get as many pelts as they can.

A study conducted in 2001 by an independent team of scientists concluded that the recommended regulations for humane hunting and killing were being neither enforced nor followed, and that 42 percent of seals were being skinned alive.

As of 2008, the Canadian government has attempted to stave off threats of a European Union ban on seal products by presenting a “new” set of rules meant to ensure a humane death:

1. Stun – render seal unconscious
2. Check – test blinking reflex to ensure seals are irreversibly unconscious
3. Bleed – cut main artery to ensure seal bleeds out

Numbers 1 and 2 have long been “recommended regulations” of the Canadian government, and as indicated previously, they are neither enforced nor applied by the majority of sealers. Additionally, it is still legal to shoot seals in the water, where none of these three rules can be followed.

The sealers hit five, six, seven, sometimes up to eight or nine seals in a row and then take their time, going back and skinning and bleeding out the seals. Eventually they get to the first seal they might have hit. That period can last up to six to 10 minutes. It’s terrible. Some of the scenes we have seen are of immense cruelty. Seals screaming, wiggling round in pain and bleeding, and crying out.

Is the seal hunt sustainable?

No, and it’s getting less sustainable as time goes on due to global warming. Over the past 10 years, between half and two-thirds of seal pups have been slaughtered by commercial sealers. The ice cover is rapidly disappearing, and many pups do not learn to swim before the ice melts beneath them. In 2007, there was a nearly 100% mortality rate. Government scientists have estimated this year’s replacement yield (the number of seals that can be killed while still allowing the species to maintain its population) at 165,000, and yet the government has set the total allowable catch at 275,000 seals.

Aren’t the seals eating the cod that Newfoundland fishers rely on to survive?

No. In fact, young cod makes up only 3 percent of the seals’ diet. The majority of their diet actually consists of fish and squid that prey on young cod; therefore, removing the seals from the equation may actually result in more cod disappearing as predatory fish flourish. The currently low cod population is the result of poor management on the part of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Even they admit that the seal hunt has no positive impact on cod population, explaining that the hunt is “…not an attempt to assist in the recovery of groundfish stocks…Seals eat cod, but seals also eat other fish that prey on cod.”

Do my taxes support the seal hunt?

Yes. Over 20 million dollars in government subsidies were provided to the Canadian sealing industry between 1995 and 2001. And while tracking subsidies to the sealing industry is difficult because the information is not public, $400,000 in government subsidies were granted as recently as 2004 to two sealing companies.

The sealers are using the meat, though, right? At least nothing goes to waste.

Actually, most of the seal goes to waste. The fur is sold to high-end retailers like Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci, and Prada. Some of the penises are sold as aphrodisiacs in Asia, and the oil is sold as a health supplement. The blubber is sometimes collected, but a 2006 study by Memorial University discovered that 80% of it is simply discarded. Meanwhile, the meat of the seal rots on the ice, as it is generally considered inedible and unfit for human consumption. On its website, the Canadian government admits that “finding a market for seal meat outside of Newfoundland continues to present a major challenge for the sealing industry.”

What would the sealers do for money if the hunt ended?

The people who work as part of the commercial seal hunt are fishers 95% of the year. 90% of the 5000 seal hunters live in Newfoundland; the $12 million that the hunt brings in each year is only one-tenth of 1% of the province’s annual economy, and only one-twentieth of the hunters’ annual income.

Even the sealers admit it isn’t an economical boost. Sealer Desmond Hunt is quoted as saying, “We all go out for the love of it rather than the money, which isn’t there anymore.”

In fact, due to massive boycotts of Newfoundland and Canadian seafood worldwide, ending the hunt could only increase profits in the area. According to 2006 reports, Canadian snow crab imports to the United States have dropped by $160 million due to the Canadian seafood boycott – this is more than ten times the money the seal hunt brings in.

“HSUS has to date persuaded almost 3,600 U.S. businesses to participate, including heavy hitters Publix (annual sales $24-billion), Whole Foods ($7-billion), WinCo Foods, Lowe’s Foods, Harris Teeter ($3-billion each) and smaller, seafood-driven ones like Legal Sea Foods ($400-million). Sealing creates less than 1% of the value of the sealing provinces’ fishery. Sacrifice 99% for the sake of 1%. Now there’s a business plan!”–Jeff White.

Are there sustainable AND profitable alternatives to the seal hunt?

Yes. At the rate that seals are being killed, there won’t be enough left to hunt in a few years. It is far more sustainable to explore ecotourism as an attraction for the area.

Since Canada banned commercial whale hunting in the 1970′s, the whale-watching industry has grown considerably and is now worth more than the seal hunt.

“Years ago, the Canadian government successfully turned its commercial whale hunt into a multimillion-dollar whale-watching industry, and there is absolutely no reason the government cannot do the same with seals,” said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the HSUS. “By continuing this appalling and inhumane hunt, the government is turning what should be an economic asset — the world’s largest migration of these highly charismatic marine mammals — into a liability. The new economies of the major nations of the world will be built around sustainable and humane practices, not the reckless exploitation of wildlife and natural resources.”

*Taken with love from www.liberationbc.org!