Seals Continue to Be Massacred for Their Skin

RolandTD20Kdrummer

sourdough wrote:

Right. I agree that the methods are wrong. However, that said, how is a seal most likely to die naturally? Either through being hunted, starvation or drowning. Even a "natural" death does not seem like a picnic and the reality is that almost all living things will come to an end in a bad way.

Even though they do not use clubs in slaughter houses, I would argue that minimally, a seal before it got clubbed lived a free life where it could swim and survive with it's mother. A cow on the other hand is couped up, removed from it's family, given hormones and treated like shit since the day it was born.

Who has it better?

*BTW-fish do NOT feel pain as they do not have a developed nervous system or brain to register pain as we imagine it. They do register that they have been hurt or that there is a dangerous situation, but it is more an instinctive reaction moreso than "pain".

My original observation was that the people who do that job are barbaric in some way to want to do it, or either starving to death.

Byrnzie

tybird wrote:

I take it the phrase "running around like a chicken with its head cut off" is one that you aren't familiar with???? Their bodies will act alive for a few minutes even with the head removed.

But their heads weren't removed. They just had their throats cut.

ClimberInOz

tybird wrote:

I take it the phrase "running around like a chicken with its head cut off" is one that you aren't familiar with???? Their bodies will act alive for a few minutes even with the head removed.

Meet Mike...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken

ClimberInOz

Collin wrote:

Do fish feel pain? No conclusive evidence to support that notion.

Not conclusive... but some evidence that fish respond to what we would determine to be a painful event in a similar way to mammals.

I don't have any major opposition to fishing- I became a marine biologist because I wanted to learn how to catch more fish (have subsequently given up fishing because I am still crap at it). I do think pain minimisation is important, but am far more concerned about conservation issues then animal rights... mainly because horrible painful deaths are the norm at almost all levels of nature.

Anyway, here are some links on fishes- make up your own mind.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T48-4C4X13T-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=f52e7e6d94202b8c92e52d64c68a08df

'Anatomical, pharmacological and behavioural data suggest that affective states of pain, fear and stress are likely to be experienced by fish in similar ways as in tetrapods. '


http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/pain/microsite/culture2.html

'Fish show several responses to a painful event: they adopt guarding behaviours, become unresponsive to external stimuli and their respiration increases. These responses disappear when the fish are given morphine – evidence that they are, mechanistically at least, directly analogous to pain responses in more complex animals.'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2983045.stm

Collin

ClimberInOz wrote:

Not conclusive... but some evidence that fish respond to what we would determine to be a painful event in a similar way to mammals.

I don't have any major opposition to fishing- I became a marine biologist because I wanted to learn how to catch more fish (have subsequently given up fishing because I am still crap at it). I do think pain minimisation is important, but am far more concerned about conservation issues then animal rights... mainly because horrible painful deaths are the norm at almost all levels of nature.

Anyway, here are some links on fishes- make up your own mind.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T48-4C4X13T-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=f52e7e6d94202b8c92e52d64c68a08df

'Anatomical, pharmacological and behavioural data suggest that affective states of pain, fear and stress are likely to be experienced by fish in similar ways as in tetrapods. '


http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/pain/microsite/culture2.html

'Fish show several responses to a painful event: they adopt guarding behaviours, become unresponsive to external stimuli and their respiration increases. These responses disappear when the fish are given morphine – evidence that they are, mechanistically at least, directly analogous to pain responses in more complex animals.'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2983045.stm

Thanks for the links!

I'm still not sure whether fish feel pain or not. I read that a recent British study by Lynne Sneddon and others claims that fish do in fact feel pain. But they injected bee venom, acetic acid, into the lips of the fish. That's not exactly the same as fish hooks, is it?

Either way, I don't fish and I'm not against fishing.

tybird

Byrnzie wrote:

But their heads weren't removed. They just had their throats cut.

Basically the same thing.....dead=dead

Byrnzie

tybird wrote:

Basically the same thing.....dead=dead

Not the same at all. If someone cut your throat you wouldn't die immediately. It would take a minute or two at least.

macgyver06

sourdough wrote:

I'm very sympathetic to the seal hunters. I DO believe very strongly in animal rights, however, there actually is an over abundance of seals thanks to removal of top predators (ie orcas) which has had detrimental effects on our already devastated fish stocks. I do object that the methods of killing are not overly humane, however I think the outcry has more to do with the fact that the seals are cute and look cuddly than anything else.

Where is the mass fury when other less cute species are decimated?

do you eat seal?

RolandTD20Kdrummer

ClimberInOz wrote:

Meet Mike...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken

That's some freaky shit...

sourdough

macgyver06 wrote:

do you eat seal?

Nope, but I would if I went north. My wife worked in Inuvik for a summer and ate seal on occasion.