Killing Them With Kindness

One of the toughest things I face while living outside of my home and native land is explaining to curious Americans what exactly goes on "up there." Why don't you play your Super Bowl in February too? What state is Ontario in? Is there both a zed and a zee in the Canadian alphabet? I answer all questions cheerfully (okay, most questions...having to explain what a "zed" is has made me lose my cool on more than one occasion), hoping to educate North Americans south of the border about everything Canadian. I haven't invented these questions, by the way. They are all verbatim from the mouths of Americans, and they should be horribly embarrassed by their ignorance.

But there's one thing that makes no sense and can't be explained no matter how hard I try, and one of which makes me horribly embarrassed to be a Canadian. As early as March, Canada will once again begin its unsightly practice of hunting seals, the world’s largest marine mammal hunt. More than 6,000 sealers, hakapiks in hand, will take to the ice to kill roughly 270,000 to 335,000 seals. Nobody understands this practice, and it's completely indefensible. This year, however, there's hope! Canada has made a few small changes to the rules of the hunt now that the country’s $13 million industry faces the possibility of a ban of seal furs from the European market.

The changes are based on an announcement made by the European Union’s Commissioner for the Environment Stavros Dimas last July: “Seal products coming from countries which practice cruel hunting methods must not be allowed to enter the EU. The EU is committed to upholding high standards of animal welfare.” This policy brought with it news that surely stunned Canadians like a smack on the head with a frozen club: “Seals are sentient mammals which can experience pain.”

So, in an effort to comply with Europe’s newly heightened awareness, the Canadian government has proposed new “humane” standards. Firstly, according to an official government publication, “No person shall use a club or a hakapik to strike a seal older than one year unless the seal has been shot with a firearm.” What? Shoot first, club later? Why would you need to club an animal that has already been shot? But for those frugal sealers who don’t want to waste a bullet, however, they can still conduct their business within acceptable standards by simply clubbing a baby seal, which usually happens anyhow. Win-win! Problem solved!

In previous hunts, sealers were required to ensure the animal was truly dead had before taking off its pelt by watching to see if it still was blinking, a test that was unreliable and more than occasionally resulted in seals being skinned alive. But faster than you can bat an eye, the Canadian government has instituted a humane solution to this problem, too! Now sealers must ensure that the seal’s skull is broken and that the animal has been bleeding for 60 seconds before they start to remove its skin. New! Improved!

Of course, all these displays of humanity will slow down the rampage. It will now take sealers much longer to bash their way through a club of baby seals, and consequently there might not be quite so many seal skins on the market this year. Not prepared to skip a beat, the Canadian government is now promoting the sale of harp seal heart valves in addition to the pelts. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans recently announced on its Web site that “promising research” has shown that the seal parts “are superior to those currently used in human heart valve transplants. It is thought that demand could be as high as 300,000 valves per year, at a cost of roughly C$5,000 (€3,400) each.” It is yet to be determined whether humane standards would be enforced for the collection of the seal’s heart valves, but it seems safe to presume that the valves would be not be required for use on a Canadian politicians, clearly a heartless bunch.