- NEW YORK (AP) - Escalating
a sporadic, 35-year-old protest campaign, opponents of Canada's seal hunt
are urging Americans to cancel trips to this country, pushing their cause
politically and have even recruited reality-TV star Paris Hilton.
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- Canadian officials, meanwhile, insist the new tactics
will fail and say the hunt will continue. "There comes a point where
you just have to say, 'This is what we believe,"' said Steven Outhouse
of the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
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- "You can't back down every time someone says it's
wrong."
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- The renewed protest initiative began last year after
federal officials announced that a quota of 975,000 seals could be killed
off Newfoundland and Labrador through 2005.
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- The protests are expected to intensify as the peak killing
period approaches in early April.
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- "We oppose the hunt for two main reasons - it's
not sustainable and it's cruel," said Naomi Rose, a scientist with
the Humane Society of the United States.
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- The society denounces the hunt as "the largest commercial
slaughter of wildlife anywhere."
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- Many countries, including the United States, ban imports
of seal products.
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- The industry earned about $15 million last year, primarily
from pelt sales to Norway, Denmark and China.
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- The East Coast hunt was among the earliest targets of
the international animal-welfare movement, with major protests starting
in 1969.
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- Brigette Bardot was among many celebrities backing the
campaign, which claimed a victory in 1983 when officials banned the killing
of "whitecoats" - the cute baby seals prized for their snow-white
fur.
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- The hunt was curtailed, but then expanded again in 1996.
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- That triggered more protests led by the International
Fund for Animal Welfare, which distributed grisly videos of seals being
slaughtered.
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- Fisheries officials say the hunt's importance has grown
because of the collapse of the North Atlantic cod fishery. They also say
the region's harp seals are far from endangered - now numbering an estimated
5.2 million.
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- The Humane Society now has taken out full-page newspaper
ads in the U.S., urging Americans to consider cancelling trips to Canada
and to boycott Canadian products.
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- In the U.S. Senate, Democrat Carl Levin of Michigan introduced
a resolution demanding that the hunt cease.
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- At this month's Sundance Film Festival, Paris Hilton
posed in an anti-hunt sweatshirt - "Club Sandwiches, Not Seals"
- and signed a protest letter to the Canadian Embassy.
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- Tina Fagan, who heads the Canadian Sealers Association,
derided such use of celebrities.
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- "They're just using it just to generate their own
publicity," she said.
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- Fagan's association, which represents about 6,000 sealers,
said it supports efforts to reduce brutality.
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- "The protest groups will never go away as long as
they can make a few bucks off it," Fagan said.
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- The level of brutality is among many disputed aspects
of the hunt. Canadian authorities acknowledge the hunt is bloody - sealers
use guns and clubs - but contend that 98 per cent of harp seals are killed
in "an acceptably humane manner."
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- Animal-rights groups, however, contend that 40 per cent
of the seals are skinned alive, most less than three months old and not
self-sufficient.
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- "There are so many boats spread over vast spaces
of ocean, there's no way the government could enforce its rules even if
it wanted to," said Rebecca Aldworth, Montreal-based seal co-ordinator
for the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
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- Copyright © 2004, CANOE, a division of Netgraphe
Inc. All rights reserved.
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- http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2004/01/28/328195-ap.html
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