Something Stinks

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Written by Lisa Coffman
Posted in iNFORMATION PRESS - Health

about Canadian Seafood

My husband and I are sitting around on the couch, miserably, having a no-you-do-it argument about who’ll go grocery shopping.

Really, the argument is about who’s going to hand the store manager the Protect Seals customer card I’ve printed from an email alert by the Humane Society.

We don’t want to not hand in the card, adorned with a button-eyed baby seal. The campaign urges stores and restaurants to shift purchasing away from Canadian seafood until Canada ends commercial seal hunting, which represents a small fraction of a hefty national fishery income. “You mean they’re still clubbing seals? I thought they’d quit,” my husband groans.

I’d thought so, too. It’s easy enough to believe this in the U.S.: the 1972 Marine Mammal Act banned trade in seal products. In 1983, the EU caught up, banning products from infant harp seals. But by the 1990’s, according to the Humane Society, the Canadian government began heavily subsidizing the seal industry. Current regulations permit sealers to hunt pups more than 12 days old, thus doing an end run around the European infant seal trade ban. Currently, the EU is considering a ban on all seal products; however, the vote won’t happen before this year’s seal hunt.

The Canadian hunt on harp seal pups begins the last week of March, although in sporting terms it’s not much of a hunt. This year’s hunt will net an estimated 300,000 pups, who will be shot, clubbed, pronounced dead, and skinned–but not necessarily in that order, as Human Society observers of the 2008 hunt noted.

Canadian regulations require sealers to slit arteries under the pups’ flippers after clubbing them to avoid risk that the seals are skinned alive.

“The sealers are supposed to do reflex check to make sure the pups are dead before beginning to skin them. We didn’t see anybody do that,” says Patricia Ragan, director of the Humane Society’s Protect Seals campaign. “We saw pups clubbed and dragged to the boat while they were still crying.

“The pups are completely helpless,” adds Ragan “Their mothers have just left. The pups haven’t learned to swim; they haven’t eaten their first solid meal. Their carcasses are left to rot on ice. They are not being killed for anything but fur.”

With its Protect Seals campaign, Humane Society is using the boycott of a very big industry to stop a small one. The US imports $2.4 billion (Canadian) of seafood–60% of Canada’s entire seafood exports, according to Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The DFO website does not offer figures for seal product exports, but the Canadian Victoria Times Colonist puts it around $7 million for worldwide–or about 0.3% of the dollars represented by the US seafood market.

As part of the Protect Seals campaign, activists can sign pledges to boycott Canadian seafood, and also drop off cards at area grocery stores urging the store to take action. (Trader Joe’s is among stores who have agreed to shift buying away from Canadian seafood.)

“We’re getting pledges every day from restaurants and grocery stores to join the campaign,” says Ragan. “We’re getting a lot that are coming in because activists drop off the cards.”

So I suit up to drop off my card at the Los Osos Von’s. I ask a clerk who is straightening meat packages in the refrigerated section where I can find the manager. She says she’ll take the card to the manager herself. “Thanks for doing this,” she adds.

She seems to mean it. Later she finds me in the bread isle. She’s brought a Von’s mailer with an address to corporate headquarters. “You could send a card to them, too,” she says.

Lisa Coffman teaches English at Cal Poly and is a freelance writer.

To join the Humane Society's campaign, go to protectseals.org.