The images in the following program are highly sensitive and may be as disturbing to viewers as they were to us. However, we have to show the truth about cruelty to animals, praying that you will help to stop it.

Canada's commercial seal hunt is the largest and most brutal slaughter of marine mammals on the planet.

This is the Stop Animal Cruelty series on Supreme Master Television. Today we raise awareness of the unconscionable Canadian commercial seal hunt, an annual massacre of baby seals. Between 2005 and 2009 more than a million Harp seal pups were brutally murdered for their fur.

Imagine going into a park and seeing a man walking around and clubbing a litter of puppies, you know, eight-week-old puppies with their bat? People would be horrified; people would be outraged; this would be front page of the news. So why is it okay to do this to seals, if we would not allow this for puppies? Seals are very closely related to dogs. There is no need for it. It’s absolutely unnecessary.

Baby Harp seals, with their warm, shining eyes, and soft white fur coats, are the very picture of innocence, beauty, and purity and are one of the most widely recognized animals on Earth. Little do they know about the horrific fate that awaits them. Within weeks of their birth, many of their lives will be ended in a sea of blood.

Approximately 97% of the Canadian seal pups slaughtered are between 25 and 90 days old. Just babies. The yearly Canadian commercial seal hunt season for Harp and Hooded seals begins November 15 and ends May 15. The majority of the seal murdering occurs between March and April. In March the focus is the Gulf of St. Lawrence around the Magdalen Islands and Prince Edward Island. A month later, the carnage shifts to the waters northeast of the province of Newfoundland.

The seal hunt is not by any definition a “hunt”; again the pups are just babies and are absolutely helpless. They move gradually and awkwardly across the ice, and even when a man is walking slowly, he can easily overtake them.

The killers mercilessly smash the seal babies in the head with a club called a hakapik, a long stick with a curved blade on the end, designed to pierce the skull and enter the brain. Some sealers brutally kick the pups in the face with their boots or heartlessly shoot them point blank in the face with a rifle.

We approached the hunters and it was awful. I mean, the seals, they were so warm from the sun, they were just lying there. Most of them weren’t even trying to escape. The sealer could just walk right up to them and club them, and it’s horrible. It was horrible. I will always remember the sound of the hakapik hitting the skull. It’s a horrible sound.

After being savagely clubbed, shot, or kicked, the seals will be sickeningly slit open from chin to genitals and their skin then violently ripped off. Although they are required by law to do so, most sealers do not bother to check whether the seal is dead before carrying out this heinous act. Some of the seals may still be conscious at this stage and thus literally be skinned alive.

Veterinarians who were on hand for a 2001 seal slaughter near Prince Edward Island found through observation of the skulls of 76 killed seals that over 40% of the seals were conscious following shooting or clubbing by the sealers. In their report, the six veterinarians also made this unanimous statement: “[W]e conclude that the hunt is resulting in considerable and unacceptable suffering.”

The blood-soaked bodies left behind after being stripped of fur have little economic value to the sealing industry and thus the corpses may be tossed into the ocean or left to rot on the ice.

We see seals that are clubbed on the head, injured but not killed. They’re left there choking on their own blood. We’ve seen seals that have been clubbed, temporarily made unconscious while the sealer goes off and does something else, and then maybe gained consciousness and start crawling around in severe pain blood coming out of everywhere. It’s horrible.

This year we saw this quite often; two seals that are clubbed and they get to the waters, slide through, they managed to escape before the sealer can get to them. So these are animals they clubbed and struck and lost. They’re dying a long, slow, painful death under the water. It’s horrible.

Rebecca Aldworth, executive director of Humane Society International/Canada issued a statement in an April 8, 2010 press release after witnessing the first day of seal slaughtering in the waters northeast of Newfoundland:

"Sealers are flagrantly violating the few inadequate rules that exist to protect seals…. One baby seal was shot in the face, and was shaking her head in agony as she crawled across the ice for several minutes, blood trailing behind her, before a sealer clubbed her.

Sealers were not checking to ensure seals were unconscious before impaling them on hooks and dragging them across the ice, throwing them onto boats, and cutting them open. In the 12 years I have observed the commercial seal slaughter in Canada, this is some of the worst cruelty I have witnessed."

Ms. Aldworth, who has devoted her life to protecting Canadian wildlife, now describes another shocking scene from Hay Island, just off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada.

Fishermen to come in here and club to death baby seals. The mother seals are trying to protect the babies, putting themselves in between the pups and the hunters, but there is nothing that they can do against sealers that are armed with wooden bats.

Baby seals are born on ice floes, and spend the first few weeks of life there until they are old enough to swim. But in recent years, climate change has taken its toll, and the amount of ice surrounding the Harp seal nursery has drastically reduced. These catastrophic environmental changes are already putting the lives of the seals in severe danger. Despite this, the slaughter relentlessly goes on.

Hundreds of thousands of seal pups have died in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence when the ice melted before they were strong enough to survive in open water.

We're moving between very broken paths of ice upon which there was just a scattered bunch of seal pups, and they were killing every seal pups that they’ve found. The pups that are out here are the survivors. And still the sealing boats are coming and they are clubbing and shooting to death these exhausted pups who have already lived through an ecological disaster.

Clubbed, shot, or simply kicked in the face with heavy boots, the innocent seals are murdered, one after another. The world is beginning to wake up to the seal killing atrocity. In 2009, Russia banned the hunting of baby seals after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin referred to it as a "bloody industry."

Yuri Trutnev, Russian Minister for Natural Resources stated, "The bloody sight of the hunting of seals, the slaughter of these defenseless animals which you cannot even call a real hunt, is banned in our country, just as well as in most developed countries, and is a serious step to protect the biodiversity of the Russian Federation."

Many high profile individuals actively support the banning of the Canadian seal hunt. After personally witnessing a seal slaughter, Sir Paul McCartney, the former Beatle and legendary British music artist, began a campaign against this barbaric practice.

Other stars who have spoken out against the seal slaughter and worked to save the lives of these precious beings include popular American actors Martin Sheen and Richard Dean Anderson, vegetarian Canadian-American actress and model Pamela Anderson as well as esteemed Irish actor Pierce Brosnan.

In the past European Union nations had been the world’s largest purchasers of Canadian seal skins, but in 2009 the European Parliament voted by an overwhelming majority to ban the import of seal products, a decision applauded by people around the world.

This announcement could spell the end of the commercial seal hunt in Canada, and save millions of animals around the world from a horrible fate.

The European Union ban had a significant impact on the 2010 Canadian seal hunt. The sealers killed far fewer seals than before due to the steep decline in the market for seal products. What can the public do to help stop the killing of these beautiful animals?

Well, the most important thing people can do is, of course, not buy seal products; don’t buy seal fur; don’t buy seal meat; don’t buy seal oil capsules; don’t buy seal products; don’t be a part of the suffering.

Another thing people can do is to be more politically engaged. In Canada, we are asking people to write to the Members of Parliament to tell them that they are opposed to the seal hunt and want to see it ended. Around the rest of the world, we are asking people to write or contact the Canadian embassy.

Renowned humanitarian, artist, and spiritual teacher Supreme Master Ching Hai deeply cares for the lives of all beings. In 2006, she gave US$10,000 to HarpSeals.org, a US- based organization devoted to putting an end to the annual hunting of Harp seals in Canada, to further their mission.

In September 2010, Dr. Diane Marmorstein, chief executive officer of HarpSeals.org, sent Supreme Master Ching Hai a letter stating that despite the European Union ban and other efforts to stop the killings, the seal hunt in Canada continues unabated and requested Her support for their new campaign to raise greater awareness about the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent pups each year and the need to immediately halt it.

In response Supreme Master Ching Hai sent a message saying that she was sorry to hear this sad news about the continuance of the seal slaughter and made an additional contribution of US$20,000 to the organization, along with her love, best wishes, and prayers for HarpSeals.org’s noble work. To date, Supreme Master Ching Hai has contributed US$230,000 to various organizations around the world which are devoted to saving the lives of seals.

We are grateful, Sheryl Fink of the International Fund for Animal Welfare Canada, Rebecca Aldworth of Humane Society International/Canada, Dr. Diane Marmorstein of HarpSeals.org and all other organizations and individuals who are dedicated to saving the lives of these wonderful, loving beings. We wish them every success in their benevolent endeavors, and look forward to the joyous day soon in coming when seal hunts are banned forever.

For more information on ending the seal hunt, please visit the following websites:
HarpSeals.org www.HarpSeals.org
Humane Society International Canada www.HSI.org/World/Canada
International Fund for Animal Welfare Canada www.StopTheSealHunt.ca

Thoughtful viewers, thank you for joining us for today’s program. Coming up next is Enlightening Entertainment after Noteworthy News. May all animals live safe and happy lives on our shared planet.