- (The seal hunt provides only 5% of fishermen's total
income. -ed.)
-
- The snow and ice of eastern Canada is set to turn red
with blood once again as hunters prepare to embark on an operation to club
or shoot up to 320,000 young seals.
-
- For the third year in a row, hunters will take to the
floes and islands around Quebec's les de la Madeleine in the Gulf of St
Lawrence. The hunt starts on Tuesday and then moves east to the ice floes
of Newfoundland.
-
- Animal rights campaigners have begun a boycott of Canadian
seafood products and this year's hunt is set to be as controversial as
before. The Canadian government has hit back with an unusually strong attack
on activists, accusing them of spreading "misleading rhetoric".
-
- "[They issue] sensational images that tell a selective,
biased and often false story," said the Fisheries Minister, Geoff
Regan. "It is a real disgrace to have such negative light being cast
on the Canadian men and women of this industry. These carefully orchestrated
campaigns twist the facts of the seal hunt for the benefit of a few extremely
powerful and well-funded organisations."
-
- The controversy is inextricably linked to the visceral
images of baby harp seals being clubbed to death and the ice floes turning
red with their blood and brains. Seal hunters say that using a spiked club
or hakapiks is a humane method but opponents say animals are often skinned
alive and left to die.
-
- "I think it comes down to being a values issue,"
said Kerry Branon, a spokeswoman for the International Fund for Animal
Welfare (Ifaw) which is opposed to the hunt but is not involved in the
boycott.
-
- Despite the efforts of activists, seal hunting in eastern
Canada has long been a way of life for some. But with a ban of seal product
imports by the United States and then, in 1983, a ban of white pelts by
the European Union, the number of kills fell as low as 15,000.
-
- Yet a growth in demand for seal pelts from new markets
such as eastern Europe and China led the Canadian government in 2003 to
issue a quota to allow hunters to kill 975,000 seals over three years.
"There is really nothing new about this year's hunt," said Roger
Simon, a fisheries spokesman.
-
- The seal hunters of the Madeleine Islands accuse the
activists of hypocrisy. For most months of the year they are fishermen
and they consider the spring seal hunt, which has been taking place for
centuries, as nothing more than a way of life that supplies much-needed
income at the end of the winter.
-
- Speaking by telephone from his home in Cap-aux-Meules,
largest of the outcrops that form the archipelago that make up the les
de la Madeleine, Chris Clark, a fisherman and seal hunter, said: "The
campaigners have not arrived yet but I'm sure they'll be here soon. There
are some people who are prepared to look at the issue from both sides but
some people just have their own agenda."
-
- The government insists that the seal hunt protects fish
stocks and provides jobs in economically depressed Newfoundland. Some fishermen
partly blame the seals for the collapse of the cod fishery.
-
- But those behind the boycott hold some leverage. Canada's
fishing industry annually exports around $3bn (£1.6bn) of seafood
to the US while the seal hunt generates just $16.5m from pelt sales. "I
think that [the Canadian government is] feeling the heat," said Pat
Ragan of the Humane Society of the United States. She added: "We're
going to be encouraging consumers to enter into dialogue with their grocery
stores and restaurants, and say: 'Please don't serve Canadian seafood'
or 'I won't buy Canadian seafood until this hunt is over'."
-
- ©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.
-
- http://news.independent.co.uk
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