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Terminate the Canadian Seal Massacre

Terminate the Canadian Seal Massacre

7,000 horses skinned alive in Canada every year?

From: Anthony Marr

To: The Telegram, St. John's, Newfoundland/labrador

Date: Fri Mar 10, 2006 4:09 pm

Re.: "IFAW wants apology" (March 9, 2006) in the Telegram, St. John's, Newfoudnland/Labrador

Subject: 7,000 horses skinned alive in Canada every year?

Would you believe that somewhere in Canada, there is a horse farm
that skins 7,000 horses alive every year? Being skinned alive is
probably on par to being burnt alive on the pain scale. Anyone
doubting this, try peeling your next hang-nail backwards please. We
know that cats and dogs are being tortured hideously before being
killed for meat, but that is in Korea. To skin horses by the
thousands alive, here in Canada? Incredible.

Yes. But change "horse" to "seal", and it suddenly becomes
acceptable, respectable, even promotable, and in fact actively
promoted by the government. Further, the government uses tax-payers'
money to employ the Coast Guard to make sure that the atrocity is
not observed. Why is that? Are seals less susceptible to pain than
horses? What do you call deliberately imparting pain on a sentient being? Webster calls it "sadism". Can making profit justify
sadism? If so, how? There is one person we can ask.

Simple. Statistics, stupid. In front page article titled "IFAW
wants apology" (March 9, 2006) in the Telegram, St. John's,
Newfoudnland/Labrador, the Newfoundland premier justifies skinning
7,000 baby seals alive, and/or by some other horrendous method which
even he would consider inhumane, by proudly quoting a 2002 Canadian
Veterinary Medical Association report, which found that "98 per cent
of seals are killed in an acceptably humane manner" 98% positive
means 2% negative. Just 2%, eh? It certainly doesn't sounds even
1% as bad as 7,000, does it? Everything is relative, but here is
something absolute. At about one meter per seal, a single file of
7,000 live-skinned seals stretches 7 kilometers, or 35 city blocks.
Walk this distance! as a meditative experience please, Mr. Williams..

Mr. Williams is smart. He chooses the report that gave the highest
percentage figure for the number of those seals deemed killed
humanely, by whatever lowered threshold of evaluation on
humaneness. I have read other equally authoritative reports, some
rating the percentage of seals killed inhumanely at 10%, 20%, or
even 40%.

Mr. Williams could argue all he wants about "regulation". The fact
of the matter is that there will always be regulation breakers, and
therefore, always seals skinned alive. The only way to ensure that
no seal is skinned alive is the ban the "hunt".

Ultimately, it comes to the moral quality of the human species. Is
it morally justifiable to deliberately skin-alive even one seal, or
one horse, or one dog, or one cat, for any reason?

Here is a test for the moral fibre of Mr. Williams. Hakkapics are a
dime a dozen. Here is one for you, Mr. Williams. And here in front
of you is a totally helpless and defenseless baby seal. Don't worry
Mr. Williams, it is older than 2 weeks and has sprung a few grey
hairs. Go ahead and bash it, Mr. Williams. Oh, and you missed
crushing its skull and it is still moving? Here is a knife. Go
ahead, skin it, Mr. Williams.

"B-But I'm not a sealer," stutters Williams. I know. You are
worse. Whereas a sealer who kills 100 seals has the blood of 100
seals on his hands, Mr. Williams, your hands are dripping with the
blood of 350,000 sentient creatures, what the Chinese call "sea
leopards".
 

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