http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/news/letters/story.html?id=1f34dae5-ec03-41e8-915b-6dd0f6a7074c

Profits, not culture, drive inhumane seal hunt
Letter
Published: Wednesday, May 21, 2008
A pro-seal hunt rally in Toronto recently proclaimed that a "proud heritage" takes place in Newfoundland and Labrador every spring.
Newfoundland Fisheries Minister Tom Rideout said that they want to tell the world that the hunt is the "province's culture," and "humane" as "long as there is a market to sell seal pelts."
Organizers played traditional music wearing seal skin guitar straps.
The arrogance of our government applauding this "heritage" is outrageous and infuriating.
Parading around in seal skin guitar straps simply shows the world that Canada is responsible for the largest legal marine mammal slaughter in history.
The European Union has been under growing pressure to adopt a ban on seal products. It has commissioned an external report that could lead to a ban very soon.
Belgium and Holland have already approved legislation prohibiting the sale of seal products, and Germany, Italy and Austria are drafting similar legislation.
Those countries aren't the biggest importers of Canadian seal products, but they serve as a very critical shipment and manufacturing point to the larger markets of Norway, Russia and China.
This commercial hunt has slaughtered hundreds of thousands of 12-week-old seals inhumanely -- 42 per cent are skinned alive. They are impaled with hakapiks and dragged across the ice.
As for "their way of life and making money to feed their families" -- it's hogwash. This is a commercial hunt for fur.
This slaughter makes up only five per cent of a sealer's income.
Industrywise, it accounts for a scant .06 per cent of Newfoundland's GDP.
Write to Prime Minister Stephen Harper at pm@pm.gc.ca and DFO Minister Loyola Hearn at hearn.l@parl.gc.ca.
Our tax dollars are paying for this.
CHRISSY VANDERHEIDE-STOLARSKI
Windsor
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/court_and_social/article3969872.ece

From The Times
May 21, 2008