IFAW disputes seal hunt changes will make annual killing more humane

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Canadian Press

CHARLOTTETOWN — An animal rights group is disputing a Canadian claim that this year's East Coast seal hunt will be more humane.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare said Thursday that a new regulation that requires hunters to bleed seals before skinning them "makes no real changes to the way seals can be killed."

Under new federal regulations, hunters will be required to sever the arteries under each flipper, thereby ensuring the animals are dead before being skinned.

But Sheryl Fink, a senior IFAW researcher, said the new regulations call only for "bleeding to be conducted at some point."


Read more: http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5inNr8xxoU8WurQ4AnzCPiSo4NNrA

[Moderator]

1. kick

[Barrett808]

2. Sealers 'breaking humane law' (+video)

Source: NZ Herald

CHARLOTTETOWN - Animal rights activists have claimed that sealers were not totally complying with a new rule designed to make their hunt more humane on the ice off the Gulf of St Lawrence.

Hunters were this year required by the Canadian Government to take extra steps to make sure the seals are dead before skinning them. After a hunter shoots or clubs a seal, he now must check its eyes to ensure it is dead, and if not, the animal's main arteries must be cut under its flippers.

Activists from the Humane Society of the United States and the International Fund for Animal Welfare were using helicopters to monitor the hunt's opening days.

"We've just filmed four seals being killed and not a single one was bled out before moving it," said Sheryl Fink, a hunt observer with IFAW.

Another observer, Cheryl Jacobson, said: "We filmed as a sealer struck a seal with a hakapik before it slipped into the water. The sealer tried to pull the seal out by the hind flippers but it slipped underwater anyway. This wounded seal will most likely die underwater."

Read more: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=39&objectid=10501055

[Omaha Steve]

3. I am shocked

Just SHOCKED! K&R!

[flvegan]

4. Then charges should surely be filed.

Obviously, this will indeed be the case since the Canadian govt is, in this aspect, soooooo non-corrupt.

[Barrett808]

5. "Hunting with hakapiks": IFAW video here:

http://www.ifaw.org/ifaw/general/default.aspx?splash&oid=179124

The sealers are making no attempt to follow the "humane killing" rule, and the Coast Guard is making no effort to enforce it.

More eyewitness accounts:

Sea Shepherd Crew Defy Canada’s Ban on Documenting the Slaughter

The following are eye-witness accounts from crewmembers onboard the Farley Mowat. The very witnessing of these events is considered illegal by the Canadian government.

We encountered the sealing vessel the Cathy Erlene, registered to Sydney NS. Upon approach we saw two small aluminum boats carrying two men each darting from ice floe to ice floe searching for baby seals. It seemed they had a system. The barbarians on the Cathy Erlene were cruising through the ice searching for the few seal pups there were. They carried on their disgusting massacre carelessly firing upon the unsuspecting babies, their only goal to find and maim the infants. We witnessed two helpless victims, meters from the ship writhing in agony, hot blood spilling onto the ice and heard their cries as they continued to suffer for a good long time awaiting the small boats to arrive and fulfill their doom. Stepping onto the ice the babies, still alive turn their heads to the approaching man with a club. There is nothing humane about this massacre. What I saw today I will never forget, their cries will fill my thoughts and torture my soul. I can say I am truly embarrassed to be of the same race as these cowards and ashamed to be a Canadian today.
-Shannon Mann, Canada

Nothing prepared me for this, no video or previous encounter with the sealers on the ice. I watched in horror and disgust as two murderers clamored from their small boat, club in hand, and smashed in the skull of a baby harp seal. For an hour or so my memories are fuzzy with blood, abuse and worst of all the cries of seals as they are brutally killed. We will do whatever we can to expose this unnecessary, disgusting slaughter of life. Canada can not continue to censor its dirty secret any longer.
- Laura Dakin UK

First sight of human life on the ice I see two men lifting a seal impaled through the neck onto a sealing boat... the seal was still moving. There was lots of ice covered with blood everywhere. There was a larger boat that the smaller boats were dropping off the seals to be skinned, one of the crew of the boat got up to wave smugly at us. They were skinning them and throwing the seal carcasses back overboard. They call it a seal hunt but I don't think walking up to a stationary seal and smashing its head in is hunting, it is an act of pure cruelty. No wonder they don't want the rest of the world to see what is happening.
-Daniel Bishop, England

It is untrue to say that killing these seals is being done humanely. Today we have seen sealers shooting the baby seals to wound them so they can't flee, beating them with wooden clubs then killing them by cutting the arteries under their flippers. The seals die slowly and in pain. It is a horrible thing to see.
- Dr Merryn Redenbach, Australia

When I woke this morning I looked through the port hole and saw red patches of blood on the ice and I knew the seal hunt had begun. On the deck I immediately saw a small boat and two men who stopped on a little piece of ice in order to slaughter an innocent baby harp seal. Actually there were two small boats and one sealing ship. The hunters carried a hakapik and bashed the seal's head. Some of the seals were still alive when they were delivered back to the sealing ship where they were finally skinned.
- Anne Fourier, France

http://seashepherd.org/news/media_080330_1.html

[Barrett808]

6. Bloody scenes as seals are culled (graphic)

Sealers drag harp seal carcasses across the ice during a hunt in the Gulf of St Lawrence off the Canadian coast.

Three seal hunters were killed when a fishing trawler hit a piece of ice and capsized in the gulf on Saturday.

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/world/article.html?in_article_id=130018&in_page_id=64

[Barrett808]

7. Humane Society statement:

Cover-Up Continues: DFO Restricting Journalists and Seal Hunt Observers Access to Today’s Seal Hunt
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=141029&mesg_id=141029