The Canadian Sportsman.... <img src=http://www.ifaw.org/ifaw/dimages/custom/3_images/Seals/slideshow/6.jpg> Seals are still skinned before being rendered fully unconscious and few sealers are observed checking for a blinking reflex to confirm brain death prior to skinning an animal. <img src=http://www.ifaw.org/ifaw/dimages/custom/3_images/Seals/slideshow/8.jpg> The most economically valuable part of a seal remains its fur, a non-essential luxury product that no one really needs. Here a sealer skins the seals and leaves the rest of the carcass on the ice to rot. <img src=http://www.ifaw.org/ifaw/dimages/custom/3_images/Seals/slideshow/11.jpg>
Clubbing is a swift and humane way to kill the seals. Do you know how your bacon and beef steak is killed? Pig farms are the most inhumane places. The manner in which pigs and cattle are killed is even more inhumane. Quote from Maverick74: You see nothing wrong with clubbing baby seals to death?
Those pictures didn't look too humane to me. And besides, they are not even fully dead when they are being skinned. Yeah, real humane.
Watch the video of the Canadian Sportsman clubbing baby seals to death..... http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2667866?htv=12 I'm sure many ET members own dogs, imagine someone clubbing puppies to death this way.....
The Canadian media gives waaay more coverage to the inhumane seal hunt than it does to the tortorous conditions in which NA livestock is routinely raised. I should know. I am Canadian (not the beer). My point is directed to the naive tree huggers who champion their new humanitarian cause while remaining totally clueless as to the far more widespread abuses of the very livestock they eat. Which of course, happens everyday. Not a few weeks out of the year, like the seal hunt. I assumed you fell squarely within this group because you picked up on a highly sensational/grotesque news story while remaining silent about the far more tortuous conditions commercial livestock spend their ENTIRE lives in. To me, if you were truly earnest and informed in your outrage, you would start with the former. Or at least acknowledge it. But perhaps you are informed and curiously chose to focus on this particular issue to the exclusion of others. If so, then I apologize. But most people are far more gullable and easily manipulated because they dont do their homework. So when they get blindsided by a sensational hit-piece like this that lacks any semblance of context, they eat it up hook, line and sinker.
That video was difficult to watch. That being said, I am sure a video of a slaughter house or a walk-through of a commercial farm would be just as stomach turning. Rifles probably should be used instead of clubs. Yes, their last 60 seconds on earth was abject suffering. But lets not lose context. Those seals enjoyed a much better life than the livestock raised for us. All in all, two wrongs don't make a right. Steroid-free, free range animals is the optimum. When i start earning enough, thats all i will buy. kudos.