STOP ANIMAL CRUELTY Icy Graveyards: The Cold Truth of Defenseless Seals | |||||||
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The images in the following program are very sensitive and may be as disturbing to viewers as they were to us. However, we have to show the truth about animal cruelty. HOST: Harp Seal butchering is by far the largest annual massacre of wild mammals in the world. Between 2005 and 2009 more than a million Harp Seal pups were brutally murdered for their fur. With their large eyes and white, fluffy coats, Harp Seals epitomize innocence and natural beauty.
Harp Seal butchering is conducted in two phases, the first of which begins in mid-March at the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada’s Quebec province. The second occurs in April at what is called “The Front” on ice floes north of the province of Newfoundland, Canada. What awaits the innocent, adorable Harp Seal pups each year defies belief. During the St. Lawrence killings sealers use snowmobiles or trucks to reach the baby seals. In a blood-filled frenzy the so-called hunters stun as many babies as possible and then place them in piles as they go on to search for more. The immensely brutal method of stunning involves hitting the babies over the head with wooden clubs or implements known as a “hakapiks,” which are wooden clubs with sharp metal spikes mounted on one end. Another common method of stunning is kicking the young seals in the face. During this time the pups that have been attacked experience severe, agonizing pain and utter bewilderment. Many of the innocent creatures have blood pouring from their noses and mouths as they flap around in a futile attempt to escape. The sealers finally return to savagely kill the infants by smashing and caving in their skulls with hakapiks. Next Mr. Michael Alvarez-Toye, spokesperson for the Calgary Animal Rights Coalition in Canada, gives further details about this senseless cruelty. Mr. Alvarez (m): So, they are at their most vulnerable and their most unlikely opportunity to escape the clutches of these human slaughterers and murderers. You have the minimal number of regulations in place to try and promote this being even remotely humane. Up until recently the vast majority of killings took place with what’s known as a hakapik, a club with a hook at the end, where the so-called fisherman-hunter would break the skull of each seal and while they were still alive start skinning them, dragging them across the ice floes. Those having the misfortune, I suppose, of escaping with just an injury of course will wind up drowning. It is such a horrendous, inhumane, barbaric process that takes place. HOST: In 2001 an independent international veterinary panel conducted a study showing that 42% of Harp Seal pups were skinned while fully conscious. Here is John Carmody, a vegan and the founder and director of ARAN – Animal Rights Action Network Ireland. This is a vegan based group working to end all forms of animal cruelty and to speak out for the rights of animals. The organization has an active campaign against seal butchering. John: HOST: Rebecca Aldworth: Now a sealer has hooked the seal pup in the water through the flipper. On the ice a sealer is clubbing the seal pup that was still conscious but wounded. The seal pup on the ice is being thrown into the boat, tossed like garbage onto other seal carcasses. The seal pup in the water is being hoisted on board the boat by the flipper and again tossed onto a pile of dead and dying seals. And what is really shocking here is that the sealer doesn’t even stop to club this baby seal, to ensure that the seal is dead. He doesn’t check to see that she’s unconscious. He just cuts her open from top to bottom, slices her open. And then the carcass of the other seal pup is thrown overboard. HOST: Mr. Alvarez (m): HOST:
Sometimes the helpless beings are still conscious when their eyes or jaws are impaled with metal hooks and they are dragged aboard the ships to be skinned. Mr. Alvarez (m): There is this great desensitizing of life towards life that takes place, a disconnect that really begs belief. In any case this is what happens: When they set a quota, say 275,000 seals this year, as an example, that’s not to say that 275,000 are killed; there is far more that get killed because what they do they tabulate the number of pelts or carcasses that are brought in. Of course we are talking about those that don’t quite get killed and escape, that slipped under the water, slipped under the ice, and there are thousands of those. HOST: The newborn pups are then mercilessly killed or thrown overboard onto the ice where they eventually die from starvation. The infant seals often cry over their loss and chase after the boats in an attempt to locate their beloved mothers. Mr. Alvarez (m): Those who engage in this say, as far as this being a necessity, this being a source of livelihood, a tradition, it isn’t. It’s just a horrible, horrible atrocity being perpetrated one by one on hundreds of thousands of seals and their babies. It’s time to end that. HOST:
You can also petition your government to ban the importation of the previously mentioned items and not allow any type of participation in the seal trade. Also, please consider protecting all precious forms of life by adopting a compassionate, healthy plant-based diet. For more about the Human Society of the United States, please visit www.hsus.org |
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