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Thursday, March 15, 2007

An Environmentalist's Case for the Seal Hunt



Cuter than cod

By Terry Glavin
Originally Published: March 7, 2007
TheTyee.ca
Re-published with the permission of the author.

I saw something the other day that made me sick to my stomach. It was in the February edition of The Grocer, a British retail-food magazine.

There was an article about a campaign that a group called Respect for Animals is waging to convince consumers to boycott Canadian seafood products. The magazine also carried two huge advertisements from the same outfit.

One of the ads consisted of a photograph of a masked man on an ice floe, and a seal lying prone at his feet. The man was brandishing a club with a spike on the end of it. The words You Can Stop This were superimposed upon the picture. The other advertisement proclaimed, "Boycott Canadian Seafood & Save the Seals," with a picture of a can of Canadian salmon.

The Canadian fishing industry exports more than $100 million worth of products into Britain every year. The point of the campaign is to squeeze those sales until the industry begs our government to end the seal hunt.

Here's what makes me sick.

The Newfoundland seal hunt is transparently and demonstrably sustainable and humane. There are roughly half a million people in Newfoundland and Labrador, and nearly six million harp seals, which is almost three times as many seals as when I was a kid.

Free range seals

Roughly 6,000 fishermen, mostly Newfoundlanders, but some are from Quebec and the Maritimes, take slightly more than 300,000 harp seals annually. The fishermen share more than $16 million from the hunt at a critical time of year when there's little in the way of fishing income to be had. The seals are harvested for their pelts and their fat, for a range of products, mostly for clothing and for Omega-3 vitamins.

The killing is as about as clean as anything you're likely to find in an abattoir. Seals don't spend their lives cooped up in paddocks or feedlots. They live free, and in all but the rarest cases, the ones that die at the hands of a swiler (a sealer) die instantly. The hakapik (a spiked club) is an effective instrument.

Even so, most seals are first shot with rifles. The killing of nursing whitecoats was banned 20 years ago.

Exploiting empathy

Here's one of those obligatory disclosures: over the years, several environmental organizations -- the Sierra Club, the David Suzuki Foundation, Greenpeace, etc. -- have subsidized my preoccupation with things that move in the water by having me do research projects for them and so on. With that out of the way, I can now say, if it isn't obvious already, that it's the seal hunt's opponents who turn my stomach.

It's not just that anti-hunt crusades like this are especially foul in the way they dishonestly misrepresent facts. It's also that they dishonestly manipulate one of the most redeeming traits the human species has inherited from hundreds of thousands of years of natural selection and cultural evolution -- our capacity to expand the embrace of our empathy to include other forms of life.

But far worse than all that, boycott campaigns like this muddy the important distinction between sustainability and sentiment, and between broadly co-ordinated acts of social responsibility and mere lifestyle choices. When we fail to make these distinctions we undermine everything worthwhile that environmentalism has accomplished since it emerged in the early 1970s.

As citizens and consumers in free societies, we are burdened with the duty to make important decisions at the ballot box, in the work we do, and also in the marketplace. Boycotting Canadian seafood to try and stop the seal hunt is the consumer-choice equivalent of deciding to buy a tie-died shirt, move into a Volkswagen van and subsist solely on lentils and tofu.

Serious stakes

Just as the excesses of postmodernist relativism have enfeebled the left over the past quarter-century or so, a corrosive strain of fact-distorting, science-hating, Gaia-bothering obscurantism has enfeebled environmentalism.

It was there from the beginning, and it persists most noticeably in animal-rights crusades. It is the environmentalist equivalent of anti-evolution, rapture-seeking Christian zealotry. It has to be attacked wherever it rears its head. There's too much at stake to pretend we can be innocent bystanders here. This is a fight we all have to join.

Here's why

The last time the planet was in the throes of an extinction spasm this cataclysmic was when the dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago. One in every four mammal species, one in eight bird species, one in nine plants, a third of all amphibians and half of all the surveyed fish species on earth are threatened with extinction.

When Greenpeace was born in Vancouver in 1971, the single greatest cause of species extinction was understood to be habitat loss. Now, the greatest threat to biological diversity is global warming. The last time the atmosphere was accumulating greenhouse gases this fast was 650,000 years ago. The prospects look exceedingly grim -- broad-scale ecological disruption, crop failure and famine, desertification and the mass dislocation of some of the most heavily-populated regions of the world.

A key reason environmentalists found themselves so ill-prepared to convince the world to take global warming seriously was that their movement had been corrupted by precisely the same trippy sentiment-mongering that has animated the holy war against the Newfoundland seal hunt, which now turns its sights on Canadian fisheries products.

Where was Greenpeace?

When the founders of Greenpeace were being born, back in the 1950s, the world's fishing fleets were taking roughly 40 million tonnes of marine biomass from the world's oceans every year. By the 1980s, it was 80 million tonnes. Then the seas just stopped giving.
Fully 90 per cent of all the big fish in the sea -- the tunas, the marlins, the sharks, the swordfish -- are now gone.

Of the many fisheries collapses that have occurred around the world in recent years, it is sadly ironic that the greatest single collapse occurred in the seas around Newfoundland, where the bulk of Canada's Atlantic seal hunt takes place. The Grand Banks cod fishery was the largest and oldest pelagic fishery in the history of the human experience.

The cod were mined from the sea by the same big-boat offshore fleets that had caused such devastation everywhere else. A way of life disappeared, and by the early 1990s, tens of thousands of workers were reduced to welfare. While all this was happening, what were environmentalists doing on the Newfoundland coast, in the country where Greenpeace was born, at a time when Greenpeace was at the height of its powers?

They were out cavorting with rich hippies and snuggling up to harp seal pups on the ice floes. They were meditating cross-legged in the snow and posing for the television cameras and demonizing the good people of Newfoundland, while the seas around them were being emptied of cod.

Rational agreements

When you go looking for the good that environmentalism has accomplished, you'll find it in such covenants as the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, the Montreal Protocol on ozone-depleting substances, and the Kyoto Accord. It's in the sustainability provisions of elaborately negotiated efforts such as the Brundtland Commission on the Environment and Development, and the UN Code of Conduct for Responsible Fishing.

The toughest global instrument to protect biodiversity is the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species. Fuzzy eco-drivel has already severely damaged CITES by forcing non-threatened species, such as North Atlantic minke whale, onto the CITES appendices. Now, in Germany and Belgium, animal-rights activists and their friends in the European Parliament are attempting to override CITES, and the European Union's own rules, with an outright ban on products from Canada's perfectly abundant harp seal population.

Similarly, seal-hunt opponents are dangerously undermining the historic victory that flowed from the Brundtland Commission. The commission established a commitment to sustainability as the key universal value to guide natural-resource harvesting policies for all the peoples of the world, regardless of their distinct cultural practices and sensibilities.

The whole point of sustainability is to ensure that people can exercise the rights and accept the responsibilities that come with sustainably harvesting the natural resources of the ecosystems within which they live. The harp seal hunt is a living embodiment of that principle. That's why environmentalists should not just give the boycott a pass, or stay neutral, but should actively support and defend the seal hunt.

The one consolation we can take from the recent hullabaloo is that it's faltering. Last year, when animal-rightists in the United States boasted that they'd convinced more than 200 restaurants and seafood retailers to boycott Canadian products to protest the hunt, it turned out that only a small minority were doing so. Most of them didn't even know they'd been listed as boycott-compliant.

Also, the European Commission, citing the absence of evidence to support contentions that the hunt is inhumane, has refused, for now, to enforce the European Parliament's proposed ban on seal products.

Contested Council

But the consumer boycott campaign that's just begun in Britain is particularly insidious. Its aim is all Canadian fisheries products, and its targets are Tesco, Sainsbury's, Somerfield and other major retail chains that have already made a commitment to eventually carrying only those seafood products that have been certified by the Marine Stewardship Council.

The MSC standard remains hotly contested by responsible environmentalists, but its coveted "eco-label" holds out the hope of forcing improvements to fisheries-management policies around the world. In Canada, those improvements are increasingly driven by the fishermen themselves, because they want the MSC label on their product.

British Columbia's halibut fishery was turned down once, and has since re-applied, because groundfish management has significantly improved -- thanks in no small part to halibut fishermen. Other fishermen are now lobbying federal fisheries officials to improve stock-assessment research to give B.C.'s dogfish fishery a shot at the MSC label. British Columbia's sockeye salmon fisheries have just undergone an arduous certification examination, and a decision is imminent.

If the cuddliness of a particular species harvested in a particular country is allowed to become the factor that determines whether that country's products are considered environmentally acceptable, then everything we won at CITES and in the Brundtland Commission is lost. If those are the kinds of choices we present to everyone from major retailers down to ordinary seafood consumers, then we'll have wasted all our efforts to marshal consumer power to force the sustainable use of the oceans.

It's long past time for conservationists to make a clean, clear, open and unequivocal break with crystal-gazing animal-rights eccentrics and all their camp followers. For them, the conservation of wild resources was always just a flag of convenience. They're dead ballast, so over the side with them.

On the question of the Atlantic harp seal harvest, there's only one defensible and honest position for a conservation-minded citizen to take.

Support the swilers.

23 comments:

ISDABY said...

I support a 'sustainable' and humane seal harvest. To be best of my ability to tell , from input from credible 'conservation' organizations and 'independant' veterinarians, and that I know my countrymen to be anything but cruel and barbaric, the commercial seal hunt is both Sustainable and humane.

Can anyone offer supportable arguments to the contrary?

lets get past personal opinions too,please!?

Anonymous said...

One small victory at a time and eventually the truth will get out. Read on:

March 15, 2007 - 8:41 am

STRASBOURG, France (AP) - The European Commission has rejected calls for an immediate EU-wide ban on the import of seal products, but ordered a study Thursday to establish whether seal hunting is carried out in a humane manner.

Under pressure from the European Parliament, which demands an immediate moratorium on seal products, the commission said it would assess the welfare of seals and send an inspection mission to a seal hunt in Canada.

Many EU legislators have criticized what they see as cruel and inhumane hunting tactics used to kill seal pups for their skins.

However, the European Commission said Thursday "there is no scientific evidence" of serious damage as a result of seal hunting.

"There must be a proper impact study before any action can be taken," EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas told the European Parliament.

"If it is established seals are hunted in an inhuman way, a ban on export and the marketing of seal products will be considered."
The Commission said the population of seals in Canada's Arctic and Atlantic regions "has grown significantly" in the last three decades from just under two million to 5.8 million harp seals alone. It added that the seals are not listed as endangered species and that their population is not under threat...

Anonymous said...

Finally, someone is standing up. We have a group of Inuit and NL sealing reps in the Hague to tell our side of the story today and we are tackling the issue head on in Ottawa today. read on:

"Up the Anti" Rally challenges seal hunt opponents. Sustainable seal harvest supporters say "We are the true environmentalists!"

OTTAWA, March 15 /CNW Telbec/

People involved in every aspect of
sustainable seal harvesting in Canada - from seal hunters to veterinarians - plan to "set the record straight" today on Parliament Hill.

"This is the first time, to our knowledge, that such a rally will be
assembled," said Rob Cahill, Executive Director of the Fur Institute of
Canada. "After 40 years of animal rights groups marginalizing people who hunt seals, it is time that unbiased information be presented to the public."

Advocates for the sustainable and respectful use of nature's resources
participating in the rally include representatives from Newfoundland, Quebec and Nunavut seal hunting communities, Omega 3 seal-oil producers, as well as veterinarians, industry spokespeople and government representatives from Newfoundland/Labrador and Nunavut.

These representatives will be available for interview on Parliament Hill from 10:30 a.m. until 2 p.m.

Newfoundland Fisheries Minister Tom Rideout said recently that his
province must challenge animal activists instead of ignoring them. "We're not going to be content to sit back and have lies, in particular, misinformed opinion, go unchallenged so we're going to be proactive from here on in, defending the hunt of a sustainable resource humanely harvested," Minister Rideout said.

Taking the lead from Minister Rideout, the "Up the Anti" rally signifies the intention of people involved in all aspects of the hunt (and other supporters of sustainable use principles) to finally challenge animal activists for their misleading campaigns.

"Activist groups have exploited and distorted this issue to make millions of dollars for more than 40 years. It is hypocritical to mount
multi-million-dollar campaigns attacking the hunting of some 300,000 seals (from a population of almost 6 million) while the rest of North America and Europe consume literally hundreds of millions of cattle and billions of chickens annually!" Mr. Cahill stated, and concluded that, "People who live closest to the land and sea have the greatest respect for healthy wildlife populations and respectful harvesting practices. I'm pleased their voice is finally being heard."

The "Up the Anti" rally begins at 10:30 a.m. In order to dispel the myth that seal carcasses are wasted, sealers will be giving away traditional seal flipper pies.

The Seals and Sealing Network (under the umbrella of the Fur Institute of Canada, a national non-profit organization promoting sustainable and wise use principles) is committed to the conservation and respectful harvesting of the world's seal species through sound scientific management and internationally accepted sustainable use practices.

The Seals and Sealing Network is comprised of government, Inuit, veterinarians, conservationists, health car practitioners and industry representatives.

Anonymous said...

"Yes" Once the seal harvest industry falls so should the "foie-gras" production industry.

Will Newfoundlanders and Labradorians be stupid enough to have one of its traditional industries be destroyed by the scammers, while there are animal culls out there that are as cruel or more crueler than the seal cull?

The deer, boar, kangaroo culls are as cruel and barbaric. The "foie gras" industry is a much more cruel and barbaric industry than the seal harvesting industry. A seal gets to live its life to the fullest until the minute it expires, the same cannot be said for animals, like the duck and geese, bred for "foie gras" that are held in areas not much bigger than the space their bodies occupy. A duck or goose bred for "foie gras" has a funnel forced down it throat 3 times per day to be forced fed corn meal which equates to 28 pounds of pasta for a human.

The stomachs of some of those birds get punctured which creates great agony for the poor little creatures. They rub their backsides against the cages and tear the feathers of that area of their body, because three times a day the sight of the feeders send them into a frenzy. Rats then come to feast off the affected areas of the birds. Sometimes their livers burst from the over-feeding. All of this torture is perpetrated on those poor creatures to produce "foie-gras" or fatty liver for the palates of the rich; because the rich are the only people who can afford to buy such delicacies. There are millions of pounds of fatty liver produced every year in France, United States, and yes, even Canada. Matter of fact there is a production site in Quebec. How can Newfoundlanders and Labradorians set back and accept all the criticism that is directed our way?

Anonymous said...

"Unfair Competition" Laws...

I have just heard today that under Canadian Law, its ILLEGAL to use false statements or otherwise misleading information associated with fundraising...its a criminal offence that could bring jail time.

Given that HSUS and others repeatedly use false and misleading information to raise funds...I think its time to take a new approach...

Anonymous said...

And some of us here in the U.S. made an effort to make sure that any seafood restaurant where we dined in offered fine Canadian seafood and would continue to do so. Plus we ate more fish each time we went out and dined on fine Canadian seafood!

Anonymous said...

Interesting that the killing of nursing whitecoats was done by Newfoundlanders until it was banned. What does does that tell you??

They'll do something horrific until they're not allowed to.

Anonymous said...

My cripes what about nursing calves taken for the anemic production of "veal". How about the little ducks and geese taken for the production of "foie gras". The seal is free up until it takes its last breath, while the calves, ducks and geese are in solitary confinement, confined to an area not much bigger than space it takes to occupy their bodies.

You are such SCAMMERS, and you are so accustomed to the big monies, HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS plust that the seal brings to your coffers, that you have disabled all your senses for all the other animals and creatures such as the calves, ducks, geese, deer and boar that suffer as much cruelty and barbarisms as the seals do. Even your MASTER said that the seal is the only animal that can draw in big campaign money because of the omnipresent tear in its eyes. If that doensn't prove to the public that you are scammers, what will. But the unsuspecting public doesn't know that your MASTER made that statement. Our side has to get that out to that unsuspecting public. That statement made by your MASTER encompasses everything that you do and labels you as SCAMMERS.

By the way Myles or Patriot has that statement archived on THIS SITE. Please go to the archives.

Anonymous said...

You are defending one atrocity by attacking another.

NONE OF IT is acceptable!

And by the way....what's with the big seal hunt issue constantly on this blog? Is the blog owner a sealer or something??

Get a new topic already.

Anonymous said...

"No" indeed, but that is what I have been saying for years. I am glad you agree. But I bet you only agree secretly. You probably would be the first one out there as a proponent against the seal hunt, while not mentioning the others animals that are cruelly and barbarically slaughtered every day under much barbaric circumstances, such as the calves produced for "veal" and ducks and geese produced for "foie gras".

I want to see the slaughter of all animals stopped, not just the seal. Why do the animal rights groups just focus on the seal? Of course, it is because the seal is the only animal with an image that can fill the animal rights group coffers.

Anonymous said...

To the anon who said "And by the way....what's with the big seal hunt issue constantly on this blog"?

By now you must be aware we are constantly attacked for having a seal harvest, while any other country, province, or nation, can produce and slaughter any animal, but animal rights groups focus just on the seal.

Anonymous said...

Because the seal is symbolic you dolt.
Can't you all see that? It's like the poster child for animal cruelty.

Quite taking everything so personally.

Anonymous said...

'NO' Definitely not, the duck or goose produced for 'foie grase' or the calf produced for 'veal,' either of these animals would take first place in that category.

You are absolutely not measuring the torture on any of these animals in the time that it takes for them to be tortured and die, such as for the duck, goose and calf, it meassure in months and the seal it only takes minutes.

Anonymous said...

Anon of March 16, 2007 9:13 AM
who wrote this "Can't you all see that? It's like the poster child for animal cruelty?"

I would like to have a meter that measures torture and barbarism to attached to the goose and duck reared for "foie gras', calf reared for 'veal' and, of course, the seal which frolics in the ocean until the minutes before its slaughter. The meters on the ducks, geese and calves would measure astronomically so much more torture than the meter that measures the torture and barbarism of the seal.

Anonymous said...

This is for the anon who wishes to have something to measure the degree of torture and barbarism that animala are subjected to.

You have it. Anyone can access it. It is called EMPATHY.
People are capable of empathy, they just don't want to use it. They prefer and enjoy killing and torturing seals and other animals.

Anonymous said...

Why do you not talk about empathy for the ducks, geese reared for foie gras and calves reared for "veal"?

The reason is, of course, ducks, geese and calves are governed by big industries with a lot of clout in government circles. You are protected by the big money. The sealing industry isn't.

Anonymous said...

One doesn't need a torture meter to measure the suffering of the ducks and geese reared for "foie gras" and calves reared for "veal", all one needs is a bit of common sense and be able to emphatise to know that the ducks, geese and calves suffer a more horrendous life and death, while the seal suffers only during the minutes that it is dying. How stupid are those animal rights people/SCAMMERS who try to perpetrate such lies on the unsuspecting public and get away with it?

The sealers need to be more proactive. The sealers and their supporters have to target the "foie gras" and "veal" industries and tell the heads of those industries that if they don't come on side, the real torture and barbarism that is carried out in their industries will not go unnoticed and will be exposed for the sheer torture it perpetrates on the animals. The real tortures need to be brought front and centre by the sealers and their supporters.

Anonymous said...

HOW CAN THOSE ANIMAL RIGHTS SCAMMERS GET OFF WITH PERPETRATING SUCH A SCAM ON THE UNSUSPECTING PUBLIC? OF COURSE, THE REASON IS THE SEALERS AND THEIR SUPPORTERS ARE NOT PROACTIVE ENOUGH. THEY HAVE TO GET IN THE LOOP AND EXPOSE WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THE MORE TORTUROUS INDUSTRIES, THE 'FOIE GRAS' AND 'VEAL' INDUSTRIES.

ALSO CALL THE SO CALLED ANIMAL RIGHTS GROUP THE NAME THEY ARE MORE DESERVING OF 'SCAMMERS'. THEY DO NOT WANT TO BE REFERRED TO AS SCAMMERS, BUT THAT IS EXACTLY WHO THEY ARE. THEY ARE NO DIFFERENT THAN MANY OTHER SCAMMERS OUT THERE IN SOCIETY, WHO SCAM BILLIONS OF THE UNSUSPECTING PUBLIC. IT MUST STOP AND THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA SHOULD PUT AN END TO IT IMMEDIATELY.

Anonymous said...

"People are capable of empathy, they just don't want to use it. They prefer and enjoy killing and torturing seals and other animals."

seals die very quickly by hakapik or a bullet to the brain. Any that do not , are a small percentage, are accidental, and should be prevented in future , but NO ONE tortures seals,

unless you were referring to Rebecca Aldworth watching the dying seal for an hour , doing notthing about it...

Anonymous said...

"Yes" indeed the seal dies very quickly while it takes TWO to SIX MONTHS for the ducks and geese for 'foe gras' and the calves for 'veal' to have their torturous lives ended. I know the type of life and death I would want to endure, and I would suspect you, as well, if either of us were one of those species. You've guessed it, it would be the life of the SEAL!

Anonymous said...

Ban Foie Gras Force Feeding
Target: Joe Knollenberg, Congressman, U.S. Congress
Sponsor: Lauren Northrop
Signatures: 605
Goal: 1,000
Deadline: Ongoing...
See Full Petition
Email this Petition
A day in the life of a bird destined to be served up as the French delicacy known as “foie gras” is something most of us could not bear to imagine. Yet, hundreds of thousands of ducks and geese across the world end up on United States dinner tables after enduring lives of unspeakable suffering. It begins with force feeding. Each day foie gras farmers shove metal or plastic tubes down the esophagus of the birds, and force feed them large amounts of high calorie “food” until the birds are at a bursting point. Indeed, some birds die excruciating deaths during feeding because their stomachs rupture. This process is repeated two or three times daily for two to four weeks until the birds are slaughtered. The goal: to achieve a diseased and grossly swollen liver in a matter of weeks. As observed by the Humane Society of the United States:

“Due to this abnormal diet, the birds' livers can enlarge up to 10 times the normal size, making it difficult for the birds to move comfortably, though sometimes they have no choice. Often, the birds are crammed into small cages where they cannot even turn around or spread their wings.” (http://www.hsus.org/farm/news/ournews/chicago_foie_gras_ban.html)
Once this goal is met, the birds are killed and sold as an expensive delicacy. Slaughter may come as a relief to these birds who are forced to endure daily force-feeding and the sensation of their livers swelling inside them to absurd levels. The birds are entirely conscious during the force feedings and during the after effects. Veterinarians weighing in on this subject have concluded that the birds suffer greatly:

“When a human liver swells to such an abnormal size, the diagnosis is hepatic lipidosis, fatty liver disease, a very painful condition that requires draining of accumulated fluid from the abdomen. Forty-eight New York-licensed veterinarians-the state where most U.S. foie gras is produced-signed a statement declaring that foie gras production is inherently cruel apart from the terrible feeding method, because foie gras is in fact the painful disease hepatic lipidosis.” (http://www.poultry.org/foiegras.htm)

In the face of this appalling cruelty, jurisdictions across the world have taken steps to ban the sale and production of foie gras. Chicago became the first United States city to ban the sale of foie gras, effective August 22, 2006. California’s ban on force-feeding will go into effect in 2012. Foreign nations including Argentina, Ireland, and Italy have imposed various forms of national bans on foie gras.

Currently, U.S. citizens in various states are joining forces in attempt to end the needless suffering involved in foie gras production on both state and national levels. Your support is vital to these efforts. Sign this petition to show your support for a ban on foie gras production and sale in your home state and on a national level.

Anonymous said...

C A R NA G E

CANTERBURY ANIMAL RESPECT NETWORK for A GREEN ENVIRONMENT



LIVING DEATH IN INTENSIVE FARMING - Part 1


INTENSIVE FARMING:
Factory farmed animals are kept inside large, stinking, windowless buildings on factory 'farms'. They never feel fresh air or take proper exercise. Their natural freedoms are brutally denied them.

Many producers have learnt nothing from their abysmal past failures. They continue to offer us cannibalism, BSE, E coli, Salmonella, Listeria, antibiotic-resistant killer bugs - and who knows what next? - together with mass animal abuse.

Factory/intensive farming produces meat and dairy products as cheaply and quickly as possible. The animals are treated like tins of beans. Their needs are ignored in the pursuit of greater profits. Male animals are rarely wanted, so most are killed off when they are born. Intensive farmers forcibly generate their animals via rape racks, artificial insemination, etc - such farms might be called a sort of agricultural brothel, with farmers acting as pimps: they profit from the sex.

Huge losses of animals in intensive farming can be written off because the industry produces animals so cheaply that although they die by the thousands and millions - from disease, suffocation or maltreatment - profits are still not seriously hurt.

The most devastating damage done to our planet stems from the production of meat and dairy products. Animal agriculture is very energy intensive. For example, animal farming is the UK's largest water user. It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound of meat, but only 25 gallons to produce a pound of wheat. A single meat-processing plant may consume 100 million gallons of water daily. Animal grazing causes soil erosion and desertification, and drains the earth's water reserves from aquifers. How and where is the waste meat, bone, ammonia and faeces disposed of? A check on some of the Link sites will prove informative.

Those implicated in all this - government, bureaucrats, intensive 'farmers', vets, inspectors, National Farmers' Union, the Meat and Livestock Commission, consumers of intensively farmed produce - are all part and parcel of the cruelty, and suffering of not only animals, but also humans.

Shouldn't food hygiene begin at these stinking so-called farms? Most consumers apparently wish to avert their eyes from the filthy and cruel and unsafe provenance of the meat on their plates. They'd rather not know. Lifestyle drug-takers are not only those who inject and/or smoke and/or pillpop . . . As they say, you are what you eat.

Producers will continue to use the intensive farm system - and expand it - until the consumer refuses to buy barbarically produced drug-laden foods. Farm animals are pushed to their natural limits to maximise production; by altering their genetic make-up, animals will be made to grow even faster, bigger or leaner. This aspect of factory farming has intensified the sheer strain on the animals. At the same time animals are being kept in larger groups at high stocking densities and, scandalously, it is the produce from these over-burdened animals kept in such systems that is being sold to the public under so-called 'Farm Assurance' schemes! The only thing assured is the inherent cruelty of super-stressed animals being kept in factory farm conditions, often. How do these so-called farmers get away with it, lying time after time? Animal eaters can call the shots. Why aren't they? After all, it is they who are eating and paying for their mad/diseased/ deformed/polluted animal flesh.

Anonymous said...

Don't forget the "FOIE-GRAS"` and "VEAL" industries are MUCH MORE barbaric and crueller than the SEALING industry, but they are MUCH MORE larger. The FOIE-GRAS and 'VEAL' industries also wield a lot more influence in the POWER corridors of industries and governments, than does the SEALING industry. The SEALING industry is only a two month a year operation and is worth, only, in the hundreds of millions of dollars, while both the “FOIE-GRAS” and “VEAL” industries are year around operations that are worth Billions of dollars and are operated in many countries around the world.



If the animal rights scammers were dealing with such powerful industries as the “FOIE-GRAS” and “VEAL” on cruelty and barbarism, that would be a very hard nut to crack, especially with all the influence those industries wield in the power corrdiors of the world. They are very much protected and please everyone, don't ever expect that the scammers or anyone would ever have a chance of getting near either of those industries operations with a camera. It is much easier for the animal rights group SCAMMERS to take a small industry, like the SEALING industry and a cute photogenic animal like the teary-eyed seal that is capable of bringing $100 million dollars plus in donations to the SCAMMER'S coffers. Also the animal rights scammers know that the SEALING industry wields absolutely no influence in the power corridors of industries and government. Also SCAMMERS will never be able to crack such industries as the "FOIE-GRAS or 'VEAL' because it would take all the monies that the SCAMMERS get donated into their coffers to do so; and for sure they do not want that to happen. After all the prime reason the SCAMMERS are protesting is not because of any creulty or barbarism that are perpetrated on the animals involved , but it is because of the easy money it brings into thier coffers to pay them big salaries.

In order to stop those so called animal rights SCAMMERS, the sealers and their supporters have to carry out a vociferous lobby, something that they have never done, a protest lobby that is as large as the one waged by animal rights groups themselves.

That being said I would like to see the killing of all animals stopped, not just the seal. When the animal rights groups or so called SCAMMERS change their stand and have a lobby to STOP the killing of all the animals in the same rally, you can be assured that I will join hands with them.

I want to add here let us join hands and voices and STOP the suffering of everything that is suffereing in this world, HUMAN BEINGS and all the other creatures of the world.