Maybe she is just ignorant like so many others or just brainwashed like many naive supporters of anti-sealing businesses, but Elizabeth May is misleading the public.
Contrary to what veterinarians, scientists and experts around the world agreed on in a Royal Commission report on sealing (the facts are there), that the seal hunt is humane, perhaps more than other animal culling industry, she says it is inherently inhumane. The Commission said that the seal hunt is neither unethical or inhumane.
If sealers replaced sealing with boat tours (not sure if that's possible with heavy ice) or if someone wanted to pay off the sealers for not harvesting seals, fine, no problem from this blogger. I would not personally be able to kill cows, pigs, birds, or seals, and many people would not, but many 100s of 1000s of people are in the animal industry across Canada, and do just that. If cows, pigs, turkeys and chickens were associated with being cute and cuddly, boy, wouldn't the nutters like Paul Watson, and other purveyors of hate, be salivating with thoughts of many more million$ for their often perverted distortions of an industry and the people involved in it.
As for markets drying up for seal products, well there is an ebb and flow to many things, and new markets are possible, China and India for example. Even if the industry faded away because of low demand, fine.
But when a national party leader like May shamelessly lies to the public to make it happen, then she loses credibility, and respect. It is pathetic that she has associated herself with hate-filled activists like Paul Watson who said last year that the icy death of sealers was not as tragic as an animals. That's the animal rights activists' thinking, and they make many millions from their hate. Why people like that are not charged with hate crimes remains a mystery.
Past links on subject.
2 comments:
"if someone wanted to pay off the sealers for not harvesting seals, fine, no problem from this blogger"
That is the Green Party policy. A fair federal buyout of sealing licenses. Same was done for whaling. If you don't want sealers to hunt, only fair to pay them what they would lose in income.
Thank you for your comment Anon.
I have to say that not only is there a problem with the Green Party's approach to the electorate (by the way I am not saying this because I am committed to the Green Party .. just an observer) in terms of alienating them, but, in it's basic perception/conception of an industry.
Let me make this perfectly clear to people who presupposes that the sealing industry is inherently wrong/cruel or evil. According to an international study, it is as humane, AND, even considered more humane, by some Veterinarians, to be more humane than other animal-based industries like cattle and poultry.
Look, I personally could not work in a walled, controlled "hunt" zone like a cattle abattoir (happening all across Canada and the world), but the Animal Rights Activists (ARAs) zone in on sealing because it has traditionally been the most successful fundraiser for them.
Want proof? Listen to Paul Watson tell Barbara Frum just that (click "Paul Watson Interview (8 min 43 sec)").. how they exploited (back in the '70s, the seal natural tear production, as crying). Please do not take offense, but really, groups that rely upon such gullibility, just insult the innocent supporters, and people who actually know better.
I have personally spoken with a Federal Fisheries Scientist who actually goes to the seal ice fronts, and, who supports the findings of the Royal Commission's findings of the sealing industry being humane.
If the Green Party is trying to find a way to rally support by ignorantly supporting what amounts to learned marketing by ARAs, then it is wasting its time and being misled.
The Green Party appears green (naive) if it thinks that its approach itself to protesting the sealing industry is the problem. It is either the obvious "hook, line and sinker" buy-in of the malicious fund-raising propaganda that the animal rights activists, propagate, or, the opportunistic partially blinded reinforcement of a public perception that most of the nation is against the seal industry (which, is according to online polls over the last several years at least, is mostly not opposed to it).
P.S. If it were proposed that sealing licences to bought out, it does not make the industry "not as legitimate" as any other animal industry in Alberta, BC, Ontario, Manitoba, or any other province.
The mistake in the Green Party's approach is not validating an industry that is first cousin to the beef industry.
Many people everywhere are green (environmentalists), but please, the Green Party's approach to sealing is condescending. It is desperation to rely upon a presumed belief that most Canadians do not know better than to really believe what malicious people like Paul Watson, spew on an annual basis. People see through this.
Respectfully,
Charles
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