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 cruelty to animals.

HOST: Beloved viewers, welcome to Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants on Supreme Master Television. On this episode of the Stop Animal Cruelty series we will again discuss seal killing in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada’s Quebec province and on the ice floes north of Newfoundland.

This unimaginable bloodbath, which involves the merciless slaughter of thousands of innocent animals, occurs each year in mid-March and April.

Ms. Fink: 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.

HOST: Sheryl Fink, Senior Research and Projects Specialist with the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) Canada and member of the organization’s Seal Team, performs the difficult task of observing and documenting the annual seal slaughter.

Her reports on the seal hunt raise public awareness of this horrific event.

Ms. Fink also serves as a spokesperson in Canada for the Fund’s seal campaign, and contacts government officials to inform them of the truth about this utterly inhumane practice.

Ms. Fink: That’s been a very long process trying to again make sure all of the politicians are aware of the facts and make sure they are aware of what is really going on.

HOST: The main types of seals brutally killed for their fur each year are the Grey Seal, the Hooded Seal and the Harp Seal.

Harp Seals are by far the main victims of the massacres.

Between 2005 and 2009 more than a million of these innocent, harmless beings were savagely murdered for their fur.

Why is it that Harp Seals in particular are the focus of the seal industry?

Ms. Fink: The Harp Seal slaughter is the largest slaughter of marine mammals anywhere in the world. They are very easy to kill because they congregate at the one time of the year when they give birth; and this is the time that they’re hunted, about three weeks after the pups are born.

So it’s very easy for the sealers to find the herds, to find the pups, and very easy for them to kill the pups
because there is no way for the pups to escape.
They haven’t learned how to swim yet.

In many cases, the ice is solid enough that --- I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a seal crawling on the ice.
They are a little bit awkward. They are not very quick, so it is very easy for the sealers to kill them.

HOST: The phrases “cowardly acts,” “disturbing” and “agonizing deaths” come to mind when viewing footage of Harp Seals being bludgeoned, sliced and tortured to death for the international fur trade.

The practice raises the questions, “Who could even wear seal fur? Do those who choose to do so even know that many seal pups are still fully conscious when their skin is ripped from their bodies?

Do they know that the sealers use “hakapiks,” wooden clubs with sharp metal spikes mounted on one end, to brutally beat and kill the animals?”

Sheryl Finks next describes the relentless massacre she witnessed this year in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.