"With nearly one million seals killed in the past three years alone, Canadas commercial seal hunt has become the largest, most brutal slaughter of marine mammals on earth. Each year, Canada allows hundreds of thousands of defenseless baby seals to be cruelly clubbed and shot to death for their fur. The last time this many seals were killedin the 1950s and 1960sthe harp seal population was reduced by as much as two-thirds."
"Last year, The HSUS documented the commercial seal hunt firsthand. What we saw was shocking: conscious baby seals stabbed with boathooks and dragged across the ice, wounded seal pups left to choke on their own blood for more than an hour, and conscious seals sliced open and skinned as they struggled. An independent veterinary study conducted in 2001 found much of the same; it concluded that 42% of the seals examined had likely been skinned alive while conscious The overwhelming majority of Canadians, Americans, and Europeans oppose the commercial seal hunt, and many of us are willing to use our consumer power to help stop it. To pressure the Canadian government and fishing industry to take action, The HSUS and our ProtectSeals network are asking consumers to boycott Canadian seafood products until the seal hunt has been ended for good."
A seal hunter clubbing a seal on the ice floes off the Gulf of St. Lawrence in the 2004 hunt. Photo IFAW/S. Cook.
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Here are a few things you can do to help stop the seal hunt:
Join the international boycott of Canadian seafood products. You can start by signing the pledge, which can be found at www.protectseals.org . If you would like to ask a restaurant near you to join the boycott, you can print out a PDF version of the pledge for seafood professionals and have them sign it.
Sign the petition to urge the Canadian Prime Minister to stop the hunt.
Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper protesting the seal hunt. Click here for suggested points you can make.
Ask the designers who use seal fur and skin to stop providing a financial incentive for the seal hunt.
Tell everyone you know about the seal hunt, and ask them to sign the pledge to boycott Canadian seafood and contact the Canadian government to demand the hunt stop. One way to spread the word is to download a PDF of the ProtectSeals brochure and leave copies in public places.
Please visit Protect Seals and the International Fund for Animal Welfare .
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I'd like to meet:
People who love animals, who would never kill them and who would like to save the seals because they are beautiful creatures!
