Re: “Anti-sealing cartoon misses the mark” and “Wyatt’s seal cartoon was an abomination” (the News, Dec. 6).
The sealer Mr. Woodford and MP Ryan Leef have shared their misguided and learned ignorance on the seal ban along with the facts that surround it. I think they consciously ignore what they know to be true.
Fact one: The baby seal slaughter off the East Coast is a baby seal slaughter. Changing the animal’s nickname, or changing the very definition of what is a baby, changes nothing. It’s government semantics, like calling someone an activist rather then an advocate.
Calling babies “beaters” at 15 days old and babies at 14 days is pathetic, just as it is to call them an adult at 25 days old because the recently moulted. Is an infant any less a baby?
Here’s what the DFO says when asked when a baby can be butchered and why they go for baby seals. “Seals cannot be legally hunted until they have moulted their first coats and live independently. Seals are not usually harvested until they are 25 days or older. Young harp seals provide the most valuable pelts and market conditions are generally stronger for this type of pelt.”
Any questions? It’s not just proof that the industry kills babies at 25 days old, but based on the opening premise they can legally hunt them at 14 days because that’s when they moult their first coat. It’s a baby, a pup, an infant. So when the industry snake oil salesman tells you they are adults, what he is really saying is that they are babies.
Fact two: This ban is not an Inuit issue. This ban is based on the slaughter of up to 500,000 baby seals hunted off the East Coast.
The Inuit don’t take part in that macabre ritual, and the Inuit way of life has nothing to do with the ban. Ten thousand perpetually unemployed, subsidized good ol’ boys descended from Europe do.
It’s unfortunate that the products that the Inuit might sell from adult seals suffer but the ban is based on an entirely different matter. From Europe’s perspective and others the practice of the baby seal slaughter is as disgusting as the ivory trade, which brings us to the next point.
Fact three: The European Union is made up of 28 sovereign countries and over half a billion people. These people have the right not to buy anything they don’t want to buy.
Not only do they see no more need for sealskin, but they also find the slaughter of infant seals ethically disgusting. The East Coast seal industry can’t force free countries to buy dead baby seals anymore than China can force us to buy toys with lead-based paint. The Russians and the U.S. banned the product. When you add other countries such as Taiwan, it’s close to 1 billion people.
You death-dealers now have a dead industry because the world has had enough. The end.
Kevin Sinclair
Whitehorse