International Fund for Animal Welfare A Better World for Animals and People Breaking News: Canadian Senator Proposes Bill to End the Seal Hunt

A miracle on ice, the birthing grounds of hundreds of thousands of baby seals will turn red with the cruel slaughter of Canada's commercial seal hunt in just a few short weeks. Seals as young as three weeks old will be clubbed and beaten. Others will be shot in open water ... many will suffocate under the ice or even be skinned alive. But for the first time in our history, a Canadian politician is proposing a law to end this suffering of baby seals. Tell Canada you support the Harb Seal Bill to end Canada's commercial seal hunt.[link]

Each year, IFAW travels to the ice to document the cruelty inherent in this hunt. I've seen baby seals dragged onto boats with metal hooks while alive. Seals left alone to die on the ice after they are bludgeoned on the head. Suffering you and I could not prevent because the law prevents us from intervening.




Why the Seal Hunt is Cruel to Seals
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"A sealer near us quickly clubbed every seal within a small radius to immobilize each of the pups, and then dragged the bodies to the center of his circle. One by one he flipped a seal on its back and skinned it. If the seal flipped around or fought against the skinning he'd flip it back to its stomach, club it several more times and then finish the skinning." -- IFAW Hunt Observer

Canada's commercial seal hunt is a hunt like no other. It is a cruel and unethical practice that produces a product nobody needs. In fact, 98% of the animals killed in the past two years have been seal pups aged about 2 weeks to 3 months. This unmanageable hunt takes place over a vast area, making it impossible to carry out humanely.
Some seals are killed with a blow to the head using a wooden club or hakapik. The sealers stun as many baby seals as they can before going back to kill them. Some seals try to get away, but they are clumsy on the ice, heaving their fat little bodies with an uncoordinated flipper shuffle. Other seals are shot from a distance and then dragged from the ice onto boats using steel hooks.

Two recent independent veterinary reports on the Canadian seal hunt, as well as IFAW video footage, have documented unacceptable levels of cruelty to baby seals. This hunt is a highly competitive activity, carried out over an extensive area, and under very unpredictable conditions. Haste is the rule, as hunters rush to immobilize as many baby seals as possible in the short time available to them.

Seals are routinely clubbed or shot and left to suffer on the ice, before being clubbed again some time thereafter. Some seals are still skinned before being rendered fully unconscious and few sealers are observed checking for a blinking reflex to confirm brain death prior to skinning an animal. As one of the veterinary reports concluded: "Canada's commercial seal hunt results in considerable and unacceptable suffering.”

The Canadian government often misleads the public by comparing the commercial seal hunt to the killing of farm animals in the food industry. Unlike abattoirs, the seal hunt is an unpredictable, unmanageable hunt for wild animals which takes place under hurried conditions. It is precisely these conditions that have led some experts to conclude that this hunt can never satisfy the requirements of a humane hunt.
(originally from a IFAW.org website)



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