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It's that time again!
Mar. 1st, 2006 12:06 pmSpring! And with spring come all the annual diatribes about how Newfoundlanders are evil for clubbing poor little baby seals over the head...
Except they don't kill the whitecoats. Really. It's been illegal since 1987, and there's no market anyway. "Haute couture!" scream the sheep. "Haute couture that makes perhaps twenty items of clothing a year! That's a sound basis for an industry!" (I'd argue against that one, but it self-defeats.)
"What a cruel way to die, being clubbed over the head!" One blow to the head is a very fast way to die. The back of the head, I might add. Consider, on the other hand, fish, which struggle in a net or on a hook for ages before being dumped into a hold to suffocate. Or cows, who are slaughtered using implements nicknamed by the people who use them "the gut-ripper" and "the tail-puller". Or most chickens, living in boxes the same height and width as the chickens, piled one on top of another and beside each other, pecking out each others' eyes. Suddenly a wild life and a quick death aren't that horrible. If you're a vegetarian, you can safely use this argument. More power to you. People like me who eat meat don't have an ethical leg to stand on here. I eat meat - I know quite well where it comes from, and I say thank you to the animal which went through hell, because I am grateful to it even if it was involuntary, just as I wear leather because I think to force a cow to suffer and then waste part of it is an abomination.
Which brings me to the next item - "It's only for their skin." It's not. The meat gets used. The bones get used. People look forward to the hunt every year because it brings some variety to a diet which, due to geographic location, is often not very varied (food is expensive up here!)
As for the 'reckless endangerment of the species'... it is possible to hunt something sustainably. There were approximately two million harp seals living around Newfoundland and Labrador in 1971. Recent counts (using the same technology of flying around and counting number of colonies, and multiplying that by average colony size) guess the current population to be roughly 5.1 million. They're actually becoming pests in some places, like pigeons in London. I also wonder if the people who make this argument realise that coffee (sun-grown. This includes all Tim Horton's, Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks, etc, and most of what you get on grocery stores, certainly all the common brands) is one of the most ecologically unsound crops there is in terms of habitat destruction, and that the habitat in question is rainforest. Boom, there goes another species, but ... mmm... caffeine.
I admire and have respect for people who want to save the world from unneccessary cruelty. May I suggest they start with chickens or fish, or veal-calves (veal is the one thing I will not eat), or elementary school playgrounds?
Except they don't kill the whitecoats. Really. It's been illegal since 1987, and there's no market anyway. "Haute couture!" scream the sheep. "Haute couture that makes perhaps twenty items of clothing a year! That's a sound basis for an industry!" (I'd argue against that one, but it self-defeats.)
"What a cruel way to die, being clubbed over the head!" One blow to the head is a very fast way to die. The back of the head, I might add. Consider, on the other hand, fish, which struggle in a net or on a hook for ages before being dumped into a hold to suffocate. Or cows, who are slaughtered using implements nicknamed by the people who use them "the gut-ripper" and "the tail-puller". Or most chickens, living in boxes the same height and width as the chickens, piled one on top of another and beside each other, pecking out each others' eyes. Suddenly a wild life and a quick death aren't that horrible. If you're a vegetarian, you can safely use this argument. More power to you. People like me who eat meat don't have an ethical leg to stand on here. I eat meat - I know quite well where it comes from, and I say thank you to the animal which went through hell, because I am grateful to it even if it was involuntary, just as I wear leather because I think to force a cow to suffer and then waste part of it is an abomination.
Which brings me to the next item - "It's only for their skin." It's not. The meat gets used. The bones get used. People look forward to the hunt every year because it brings some variety to a diet which, due to geographic location, is often not very varied (food is expensive up here!)
As for the 'reckless endangerment of the species'... it is possible to hunt something sustainably. There were approximately two million harp seals living around Newfoundland and Labrador in 1971. Recent counts (using the same technology of flying around and counting number of colonies, and multiplying that by average colony size) guess the current population to be roughly 5.1 million. They're actually becoming pests in some places, like pigeons in London. I also wonder if the people who make this argument realise that coffee (sun-grown. This includes all Tim Horton's, Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks, etc, and most of what you get on grocery stores, certainly all the common brands) is one of the most ecologically unsound crops there is in terms of habitat destruction, and that the habitat in question is rainforest. Boom, there goes another species, but ... mmm... caffeine.
I admire and have respect for people who want to save the world from unneccessary cruelty. May I suggest they start with chickens or fish, or veal-calves (veal is the one thing I will not eat), or elementary school playgrounds?
