574 



if it were transformed into a seal preserve and a serious effort was made to pro- 

 mote tourism there during the period when the baby seals were being born and 

 nursed. 



Furthermore, there are numerous other sources of leather and fur trim, which 

 are made from the seial pelts ; and the oil, which is made from the blubber and 

 used in margarine, soap, and cosmetics, can easily be obtained el.^ewhere. And the 

 snow-white fur so primitively "harvested" from the baby seals is in no sense 

 necessary to man's welfare. By any standard it is a luxury item. 



One criticism to which the Canadian government has shown some sensitivity 

 concerns the killing of the baby seals, especially the '"whitecoats," since they 

 present a vividly pitiful spectacle as they are clubbed to death. In response to 

 protests over this, the Canadian government last year promised that no baby 

 seals would be killed in the 1970 hunt. Official sta;tements continue to make much 

 of the claim that the opening of the hunt was pjostponed and whitecoats were 

 prohibited from l)eing taken. However, what is left unsaid is that the authorities 

 simply got around this prohibition by referring to 21-day-old infant seals that had 

 shed their white coats as "beaters," and these were still fair prey. 



The government's announcement did, however, have its intended effect of quiet- 

 ing the public uproar. Furthermore, spring came late last year, and the setting 

 back of the opening of the hunt by 10 days did not have the ostensibly desired 

 effect. As an official brochure euphemistically states, "the Gulf herd was late in 

 whelping, and as a result, some of the animals were not as mobile as anticipated." 

 This year the hunt officials have dispensed altogether with this subterfuge and are 

 openly permitting baby seals — whitecoats and beaters — to be killed. 



Finally, there is the matter of the humaneness of the hunt, and the Canadian 

 government emphasizes that it is carried out under strict sujpervision and in as 

 himiane a manner as possible. However, an embassy spokesman in Washington 

 admitted that the area of the hunt is too large for complete supervision and that 

 some violations of the rules do inevitably occur. 



It is difficult to see how a hunt can be defended as "humane" when the most 

 efficient and generally used method of killing is with clubs ; and since the skulls 

 of the seals are covered with layers of thick blubber, it often requires many re- 

 peated blows to smash their .skulls and render them dead or unconscious. And 

 although it is officially denied, some pups are skinned alive. 



# 



A teal hunter is elosfly tcatched by Celia Eammond, 

 representing a British society uhich protests killing 



of seals, as he clubs a hnrp seal pup on the ice floes 

 of the Gulf of St. Lawrence last year. 



