http://thechronicleherald.ca/Opinion/1116783.html

I am writing in response to The Chronicle Herald’s coverage of the
Protect Seals boycott, including Stephen Maher’s recent column "The
bus driver’s attack: a completely acceptable, harmless counter-protest."

I am the owner of Prime Seafood LLC, a U.S. seafood distribution
company which is part of the boycott of Canadian seafood organized by
the Humane Society of the United States. I am also a marine biologist
with over 35 years of national and international fishery conservation
and management experience, most with the U.S. agency which manages
marine fisheries.

In his recent column, Mr. Maher asserted that the "Humane Society has
been caught lying about the effectiveness of an American boycott of
Canadian seafood."

If anything, the Humane Society has been unduly modest about the
impact of the boycott.

Since the boycott began, the value of Canadian snow crab exports to
the U.S. has declined by more than $750 million. The value of seafood
exports from Newfoundland and Labrador to the U.S. fell by 51 per
cent. These figures come from Statistics Canada, the Department of
Fisheries and Oceans and Industry Canada.

DFO blames the lost export revenue first and foremost on exchange
rates. This view doesn’t withstand examination. The U.S. dollar fell
by 18 per cent in the period in question. Seafood exports from
Newfoundland fell by 51 per cent. Exports from other industries in
Newfoundland to the U.S. went up by 29 per cent. (If one includes the
oil and gas extraction businesses, they were up by 94 per cent.)
Either one can believe that exchange rates are singling out the
seafood industry, or one can accept that other things are coming into
play that are negatively impacting seafood exports and not exports
from other industries.

Recently, the Canadian Consulate in Los Angeles held a meeting with
U.S. seafood wholesalers. During the meeting, a salesman from a major
Californian company said over half of his customers "flat out refuse
to buy Canadian seafood." Representatives from other wholesalers
echoed this message; large numbers of their customers (restaurants,
hotels, casinos and grocery stores) won’t buy Canadian seafood until
the commercial seal hunt ends. I hear this from my customers, too.

Over 5,000 grocery stores and restaurants are part of the boycott,
including multi-billion-dollar companies such as Whole Foods, Trader
Joe’s, Harris Teeter, and BI-LO. Collectively, we buy billions of
dollars worth of seafood – far less of which comes from Canada these
days. New U.S. companies join the boycott weekly. The boycott is now
on its way to the EU.

No impact? No way.

The DFO’s position on this issue stretches credulity, and yet Mr.
Maher accepts it without question. Ditto for statements about the
"need" for the hunt. As for economic need – DFO data show that only
1.3 per cent of Newfoundland’s landed fishery in 2008 came from the
seal hunt. Sealers earn the vast majority of their income from
catching seafood, not killing seals.

As far as saving cod goes, DFO scientists concede that even if the
entire seal population were eliminated, there is no reason to believe
that the cod population would recover – that’s the consequence of
severe overfishing.

Canada’s commercial seal hunt is the world’s largest slaughter of
marine mammals, with more than one million baby seals killed in the
past four years. Ninety-seven per cent are less than three months old
when they are killed. Many have yet to eat their first solid meal when
they are beaten to death. Each year, their suffering has been
documented on film by the Humane Society, including seals cut open
while writhing in pain, conscious seals impaled on steel spikes and
dragged across the ice floes, animals skinned alive, and wounded seals
left to suffer.

Mr. Maher states that he believes the commercial seal hunt is "… as
humane, more or less, as farmyard practices, but if I were to learn
that it does cause suffering to seals, I still wouldn’t care very much."

Last month, citing concern about cruelty, Russia announced a ban on
slaughtering seals younger than one year old. International opinion,
as well as the opinion of the vast majority of Canadian citizens, is
overwhelmingly in favour of ending the inhumane slaughter of baby seals.

Here’s hoping Ottawa listens to them and not to Mr. Maher.

Jim Chambers is founder/owner of Prime Seafood in Kensington, Md.