Daily Mail April 26

[Ravens8]

Did anyone see the Daily Mail article "The Secret Slaughter" on Wednesday?

 

About the seal cull (Yet again!!). It just makes me sooo ANGRY, so one sided, blinkered and hypocritical.

 

Anyway it finally pushed me to writing a letter to them. Dont suppose it will get published. But it might ease my anger a little if somebody reads it, so here it is.

 

 

Re:

[Guest]

Well done. BRILLIANT letter Ravens.

 

lets all follow up maybe with letters or going online.

[sta]

I love fur as much as anyone here, however, your take on the seal hunt is utter nonsense. The commercial seal hunt is conducted by Canadian fishermen and not the inuit. There is absolutley no justifaction for the brutal inacurate clubbing, dragging by hooks and skinning alive of seals. The inuit harvest seals in a much more humane way. The animals are quickly stunned and then the Inuit only then go on to use nearly every part of the seal instead of just skinning it and dumping the carcass. Quite simply if the commercial seal hunt continues as well as the poor animal husbandry in the far east, then the fashion we all love will again be taboo. I fully support the use of animals for fur, as long as the very high conditions of husbandry as perfomed by most European and North American ranches is adhered to. The Canadian comercial hunt is barbaric and does nothing but tarnish the fur trade.

[Guest]

Sta

your position is racist as most of the locals use exactly the same methods as the inuit. The only problem is the waste...and that has been forced by the limit in a ridiculously short season forced by compromise withe the antis.

 

Yhere would be no reason for the cull if the Inuit had been allowed to hunt at susatainable levels and the local fishing industries fish stocks had not been consumed by the vast increase in harp seal numbers which also threaten other arctic mammals such as the fur seal, narwhal, etc.

 

I agree wholehearterdly on the dog and cat thing in China.

 

However the Inuit Circumpolar Conference President has seen the actions of Paul Mccartney as racist toward them and have appealed to the world to see their point of view. Look up "Save the Baby veal" Inuit youth response to the attack on the seal cull.

 

Harp seals are extremely succesful, the pups are little use as fur, and they are not endangered. they have a voracious appetite and consume forty fish a day X the possibility their numbers are up by several million.

 

So what is it...its cute?

 

Most conservationists and animal experts recognise the cull is necessary in terms of wildlife management.

[Ravens8]

I never mentioned the inuit. There's a whole bunch of people trying to make a living up there. Dosen't matter what "race " you belong to. It's about trying to make a living where most of us wouldn't know where to begin.

 

Yes they are fishermen. (They're also people dont forget, with faces dont forget, in fact pretty much like you and I) But OK lets categorise them as "Fisherman" Tell me what other life sustaining harvest there is in those places. But that makes the seal cull a fishing industry problem, not fur trade. The fur trade is secondary to that. Would it make people feel better if the pelts were just allowed to rot. What's the point in that? If the animal is being killed, might as well make use of it. That's what nature intended after all, a great big web of interdependent units.

 

We've just got to face it. In many parts of the world life is pretty brutal. The Americas, Africa Asia, South America - all over. Just because we live an apparently peacefull life "outside" of nature, dosen't alter the reality of Nature. And for all our so called "civilization" we can never escape the fact that even the mighty race of "mankind" is just another pawn in the game along with everything else.

 

That's gone a little more off topic. To get back to the point. I still reckon no one would give a s**t about this if those ice floes were overun with Brown Rats and it was them that were being clubbed and skinned alive.

 

Before we get hot under the collar about this. Shouldn't we see some hard statistics as to what percentage of the seal cull are actually skinned alive. Granted it shouldn't happen, but accept the fact that in a cull of this size it will happen.

 

You get the same thing in Nature. Most predator Prey attacks are unsuccessfull and often leave wounded in their wake.

 

And another thing. I've been in plenty of situations where I could well have been prey myself to predators. I'm under no illusion that if it had happened I would have been eaten alive, screaming and kicking. No mercy killing "Is he dead yet, OK lets start eating him now" - some chance.

 

Just random thoughts that dont necessarily tie smoothly together while I wait for the kettle to boil.

 

Dont mean much really.

 

Too much talk. It's boiled. I'm off to bed now - 'night all

 

BTW - well said Touch

[Guest]

great words ravens

 

my belief is that nature is a circle of life; energy. Yes its a shame if there is waste.

 

but the fox doesnt think about it in the chicken house or the seal in the cod shoal. High on adrenalin it bites at everything.

 

BUT nature uses everything and it all goes back into the circle.

 

 

Predatores mange herbivores so the plants arent all eaten. Man is a predator and sometimes preys on predators to keep them in check. The their energy can become ours. So yes, its better the animal is used.

 

Skinned alive after being clubbed to death. How does that work?

 

A bit like a fox being torn apart alive by hounds I guess. Its torn apart dead of course.

 

Dont fall prey to emotive and misleading language folks.

[Chubby]

Don't have much time to go into this right now, but check out this link.

http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/seal-phoque/reports-rapports/mgtplan-plangest2002/mgtplan-plangest2002_e.htm

Just some quick points:

 

90% are shot not clubbed

 

It's against the law to skin an animal alive, and yes Canada does have laws against amimal cruelty.

 

The carcasses are not left on the ice to rot. There's a healthy market for seal oil which means the carcass is rendered.

 

There're plenty Canadian fishermen who are of aboriginal ancestry. (They're not all of the "barbaric" European variety)

 

Unfortunately there's only a very small market for seal meat. (That's not our fault)

 

Chubby

 

p.s. Great letter Ravens8, well done sir.

[auzmink]

Don't know about any other members, but this discussion is very interesting. I have to admit to not knowing all the ins and outs of the cull. TV makes it look dramatic but facts, figures and level thoughts make the process more adjusted. Never was against it, the World is a cruel place. If we can keep the cruelty down (aka China issues) then such culls are appropriate. Thanks all for the discussion. Good letter Ravens8

Auzmink

[Ravens8]

Just for the record

 

I'm totally against willfull cruelty as practiced by some unscrupulous animal traders all over the world, and depicted by the infamous example in china (you cant extrapolate to say that 'the Chinese' are cruel to animals)

 

There's a big difference between keeping animals in miserable conditions, kicking them, treating them rough maybe for days weeks or moinths before finally slowly killing them etc. between that and killing an animal which one minute is a wild creature and the next is dead even if it does take a few unintentional and unfortunate few minutes to die.

 

Most reasonable minded people would surely abhor the former, but realise that the latter is just Nature in action