Canada's Shameful Side: 388,000 Baby Seals To Be Slaughtered

lukin2006

Few fishermen expected to join in when N.L. seal hunt resumes on Thursday


ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - The commercial seal hunt is scheduled to resume Thursday in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and off northeastern Newfoundland in an area known as the Front.
However, few sealers are expected to head out. Frank Pinhorn of the Canadian Sealers Association says that's because there isn't much of a market for pelts.
He says he knows of only one company that's buying this year.
Pinhorn says some of the major buyers still have inventory from past years and he doesn't expect the situation to improve for another year or so.
Fisheries Minister Gail Shea says that while the Canadian sealing industry is not overly profitable right now, the federal government continues to seek new opportunities.

lukin2006

Half of sealers want federal buyout: poll

Bradley Bouzane, Canwest News Service
Published: Tuesday, April 06, 2010


A recent poll reveals half of Newfoundland sealers surveyed support a federal buyout of the industry, which would involve fishermen and vessel owners being compensated for their sealing licences, and money being invested in economic alternatives for affected communities.

The poll, conducted by Ipsos Reid on behalf of the Humane Society International/Canada, an animal rights group that opposes the hunt, said half of the 181 sealers it polled by telephone between Dec. 7, 2009 and Jan. 24, 2010 were in favour of a buyout. The poll is considered accurate plus or minus 7.3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

But the Canadian Sealers Association does not see that as a reasonable option and disputes the poll's accuracy.

"There's 11,000 licensed sealers in Newfoundland and Labrador and I don't know where they got the sealers," said Frank Pinhorn, executive director of the Canadian Sealers Association in Newfoundland. "I don't think their base for doing this survey is representative in any meaningful percentage."

The humane society said the poll indicates the sealers' desire to take an alternate route instead of receiving government subsidies to keep the industry viable.

"The Canadian government claims they are supporting sealers by promoting and subsidizing the sealing industry," Humane Society executive director Rebecca Aldworth said in a news release. "Yet this poll reveals broad support among sealers for a federal buyout of the sealing industry -- a solution that would allow Canada to gracefully exit a controversy that has haunted us for five decades."

With the hunt set to open off Newfoundland's northeast coast on Thursday, one thing the two sides can seem to agree on is a depressed market for seal products.

Mr. Pinhorn said a reduced market is not only felt by the sealing industry, however, and expands into other fisheries as well.

"The sealing industry is not immune in 2009 or 2010 to what is happening worldwide with respect to the recession," Mr. Pinhorn said from Conception Bay South, just outside St. John's. "The market is cold on shrimp and lobsters and everything people in rural Newfoundland and Labrador harvest for a living."

Mr. Pinhorn estimates the total seal hunt this year will be similar to 2009, with only between 50,000 and 70,000 seals harvested. The quota set by the federal government is 335,000.

He insists the release of the poll is a ploy for groups opposed to the annual seal hunt to stay relevant when poor conditions do not allow them to be in the public eye during the harvest.

"Normally these groups make their pilgrimage to the Gulf [of St. Lawrence] each year and stick their helicopters down on the ice. But there's no ice out there this year, so they have to maintain their profile somehow," Mr. Pinhorn said. "It's an excuse to make people believe they're still doing something meaningful. It's another way for them to deceive the general public to get money into their accounts for selfish reasons. That's exactly what this is."



Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html? ... z0kQcuwSbs
If this is true then why doesn't PETA and all who are opposed to this and put their money where their mouth is and negotiate with these individuals and contribute to the cause, like I've stated they need the money, however, I doubt this poll is very accurate.

g under p

Animal slaughter is happening all over the world, as it does in the Scandinavian country of Denmark Faroe Island. Graphic video warning.

http://ecopathic.blogspot.com/2008/03/d ... hales.html

Peace

haffajappa

Has anyone seen Earthlings? AKA "The Vegan Maker" it's been deemed by some...

I cried at least twice.

lukin2006

http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/04/29 ... app-store/

Here is the video of the game

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXiPLDJI ... _embedded#!

Apple rejects seal-clubbing game from App Store
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By National Post Staff April 29, 2010 – 4:59 pm



By Althea Manasan, National Post

With all the missing iPhone drama dogging Apple recently, who would have thought that the next issue to plague the tech firm would be seal hunting?

Last week the company rejected a video game submitted to their App Store that would let players club virtual seals on their handheld devices.

The game’s designer, Matt Smyth, a Canadian software engineer, can’t understand why.The 28-year-old from St. John’s, N.L., wrote on his blog:

So I decided to develop a game based on the seal hunt (with a club). You play a seal hunter armed with a club against an unlimited number of seals. Tilting the device in the desired direction moves the club around the screen, and making a flicking motion causes the club to hit a seal or the ground. I tired to keep the game light hearted as possible with no blood, or clubbing baby seals. Well… you can try and club the baby seals, but you lose points and they just take off really fast.
The game, called iSealClub, isn’t the first one that Apple has shunned from its online store. Professional developers and hobbyists alike can create and submit applications to the App Store, but some for one reason or another, some don’t make the cut. Panned games include the real life-inspired MyShoe, where you throw footwear at George W. Bush, and Baby Shaker, where you shake babies until they stop crying.

According to Apple’s rejection letter, iSealClub contained “objectionable content,” but Smyth disagrees. He told Canadian Press:

“I was careful not to make the game graphic or have any gore or anything. It’s very light-hearted. It’s all cartoon based. It’s not what you would consider a very violent game. I know it involves clubbing seals, but (it’s) no different than the way people get clubbed in Mickey Mouse or Looney Tunes.”

Smyth wonders whether Apple rejected the game because they oppose the Canadian seal hunt. He calls this unfair because the hunt is socially acceptable in his province and sanctioned by the federal government. And in his game, just in like real life, hunting baby seals in illegal. This observance of the law, he argues, makes his game less “objectionable” compared to other games available in the App Store that let players shoot cops and steal cars, like Grand Theft Auto.

“I have that on my phone,” he said. “You can walk around, shoot cops in cold blood, and watch them sort of fall down in their own pool of blood.”

But what Smyth is forgetting is that cops are not nearly as cute as cuddly seals.


Read more: http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/04/29 ... z0mgi415mA