Killing in the name of fashion

[NVMojo]

Gawd, this is a gruesome thing to behold ...

http://images.thetimes.co.uk/TGD/picture/0,,189309,00.jpg


ON THE ice floes of Canada’s northeast coast more than a thousand hunters have embarked on the biggest and bloodiest seal hunt of modern times — a grisly annual ritual that has provoked an outcry from environmentalists the world over.


On the frozen surface of the Gulf of St Lawrence hunters armed with rifles, spears and clubs have begun to track down the first of more than 300,000 baby seals to be killed for their valuable pelts over the coming six weeks.

The seal hunting industry faced bankruptcy a few years ago because of lack of demand abroad. But with fur back in fashion, and seal skins now worth a record high of about £30 each, hunting the mammals is suddenly profitable and popular. Last year locals made about £7 million from the hunt and expect their biggest profits this year. But the bonanza will come at a steep price for Canada’s reputation. Shocking images and gruesome eyewitness accounts of the carnage were yesterday relayed around the world by environmental groups demanding a boycott of Canadian goods.

more...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1548232,00.html

[pnutchuck]

1. I hate these stories... I don't wear fur or leather anymore

and am a vegetarian. When I see these images I just shake with anger and want to cry....:cry:

edit spelling

[jdj]

25. me either. And rap has brought it back with flying colors.

I am a fan of rap music, but the popularity and ostentatious display of fur among rap artists and young republicans like Jessica Simpson is such a sad turn of events, I'm at the point where I just don't buy the work of artists that ostentatiously display fur, and that includes my favorite artist, little Kim. She and Pamela Anderson got pretty tight for a while, but I bet I know where they parted company.

I keep waiting for PETA to run an ad directed at young African Americans fur wearers that says something controversial like "don't be a slave to fashion", or something.

[pnutchuck]

28. That would make for a good ad..

I was shattered when I saw Missy Elliot in a fur coat. But I also remember an episode from Sex & The City, when SJP was supposed to model Dolce & Gabbana and they put her in panties and fur coat. I just kind of lost my appetite for the show.

[mike_c]

2. this is absolutely barbaric....

People will do ANYTHING for money. ANY-FUCKING-THING. There is no depravity too debased, no destruction too foul. There are people who would willingly strip the skin from their living grandmothers if there was a marking for their agony.

[tuvor]

3. I've been waiting for over a week for someone

...to offer PROOF that this hunt is actually inhumane. Like I said in the thread below, yeah, it LOOKS gruesome, but any more so than the gray, smelly killing floor of a veal farm?

None of the folks against the seal hunt seem interested in convincing me.

Why don't you join the discussion at

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=190&topic_id=4148&mesg_id=4148

Unfortunately I have to head out to work now, but I am looking forward to everyone's input.

[chlamor]

5. You are right

in that this is no different than a smelly killing floor. Can you not imagine a world without either? I am not a vegetarian. I do not support industrial methods of obtaining food or clothing be it veggie or meat. The hunt is a ritual, this is capital slaughter, do not seperate it out from Chinese working and dying en masse for the RR industry in 1800's and so on.

[NVMojo]

6. I don't eat veal and this hunt brought in 300,000 defenseless animals

for the kill. That is not a hunt. That is a slaughterhouse without a roof.

[livinginphotographs]

13. See my post here.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0327-05.htm

Some seals will be killed using hakapics, a wooden pole with a metal spike at the end. The Canadian government defends its use as humane, but footage last year suggested young animals were left convulsing after initial strikes failed to kill them instantly. The remainder are shot with rifles or shotguns.

http://www.furisdead.com/feat-harpseal.asp
(with video)

If you were to witness the hunt in Newfoundland, you would see firsthand hundreds of thousands of baby seals, too young even to know how to swim away, having their heads bashed in or being shot pointblank. You would witness a scene much like the one reported last year in The Washington Post: " seal appearing to gasp for air, blood running from its nose as it lies on an ice floe. Not far away, a sealer sharpens his knife blade. The seal seems to be thrashing as its fur is sliced from its torso." Or like this one reported in the Christian Science Monitor: "The few terrified survivors, left to crawl through the carnage. The shouted obscenities and threats from the sealers, gunfire cracking ominously in the distance. The pitiful cries of the pups; the repellent thuds of clubs raining down on soft skulls. Sealers' laughter echoing across the ice floes." You may even hear the seal killers "utter a sarcastic 'welcome aboard' as they throw the skins on their 65-foot boat," as The New York Times reported last April. Maybe this year, the images of the ice floes bloodied with carcasses will do the trick to persuade you to give up furs forever.

http://www.hsus.org/marine_mammals/protect_seals /

An alarming number of the seals are skinned while alive and responsive to pain. Recently, an independent, international team of veterinarians observed the hunt and examined the corpses of skinned seals. They found evidence that up to 40% of them had skull injuries that were not sufficient to have caused death.

http://www.hsus.org/marine_mammals/protect_seals/facts_about_the_canadian_seal_hunt.html

It is important to note that each killing method is demonstrably cruel. Because sealers shoot at seals from moving boats, the pups are often only wounded. The main sealskin processing plant in Canada deducts $2 from the price they pay for the skins for each bullet hole they find—therefore sealers are loath to shoot seals more than once. As a result, wounded seals are left to suffer in agony—many slip beneath the surface of the water where they die slowly and are never recovered.

Is the Seal Hunt Cruel?
Yes. In 2001, a report by an independent team of veterinarians who studied the hunt concluded that governmental regulations regarding humane killing were neither being respected nor enforced, and that the seal hunt failed to comply with Canada's basic animal welfare regulations. Shockingly, the veterinarians found that in 42% of the cases they studied, the seals had likely been skinned alive while conscious.

Parliamentarians, journalists, and scientists who observe Canada's commercial seal hunt each year continue to report unacceptable levels of cruelty, including sealers dragging conscious seals across the ice floes with boat hooks, shooting seals and leaving them to suffer in agony, stockpiling dead and dying animals, and even skinning seals alive. Click here to see recent video footage of Canada's commercial seal hunt.


Does that work?

[jdj]

24. bludgeoning a cub to death in front of it's mother is "humane"?

I think you need your head examined.

[Dave Reynolds]

27. It's interesting that some of us

still try to reason with our own fundamentalists.

Have at it, Tuvor. May you have better luck than I did.

[chlamor]

4. Industrial Slaughter

Not to be separated from other results of industrialism and human arrogance and warring tendencies. The hunt in a sacred manner is elegant and powerful. This is not that.

[depakid]

7. The key is killing the demand

If people don't want it or can't afford it, the atrocities stop.

[chitina]

8. Why does Canada allow this? I thought they were more enlightened.

[Selteri]

9. officially they allow it because the seal population has exploded.

I don't totally agree with what they do, at the same time though, I don't agree one bit with the method, but at the same time, our rampant fishing and other actions have removed a lot of thier food.

It's BARELY kinder than letting them starve.

[depakid]

10. Again- if there were no demand

from places where seal products are used as "aphrodisiacs" and such, there wouldn't be an incentive for people to go and do this. If there is a need to cull the herds- that can be done- but if you're not making money at it, then the "entrepreneurs" will take a back seat to the wildlife biologists.

Otherwise, there's prety much no stopping it-

[BrightKnight]

20. Seals will eat into fishing industry profits.

There are enough fish for the seal population. The fishing industry is afraid that the seals will eat into their profits. Healthy ecosystems are not good for business.

[Runcible Spoon]

11. fucking sick.

I wish there was more outcry over this on DU. Now just a matter of time before the People for Eating of Tasty Animals brigade gets here.....

[BiggJawn]

12. What do they use Seal pelts for?

I don't recall anything I own that's made of Seals.
Is Seal one of those things for the SUV-GOP crowd?

[Hand]

15. The money's not in the pelts

It's the penises--they're sold for huge bucks in Taiwan and China as an aphrodisiac. Black bears are murdered for the same reason.

BTW, the seal hunters themselves don't see a lot of money for their work--I understand that they average around $1100 apiece before expenses. Still, if you're chronically unemployed and the fishery is flat-out OVER, that's better than nothing by a long shot.

:grr: :cry:

[BiggJawn]

16. Cut off the dicks and leave the rest?

Then why are the news stories talking about the PELTS? Is that "code"?

"Hey, baby, you make my PELT so big and hard!"

With the bears, it's the paws, if I recall correctly. The only thing worse than animals dieing for absolutely nothing is animals dieing for some bullshit folk-remedy.

<shakes head wearily>

[Hand]

17. No, they take the pelts as well...

Most of the sales are to Russia and China. You couldn't get away with a sealskin coat anywhere else... well, maybe Crawford, Texas.
:cry:

[XemaSab]

18. Bears are killed for

their gall bladders.

[TX-RAT]

19. Seal products are banned in the US.

[pnutchuck]

29. I live in Paris and I can tell you they have no problem with fur coats

I'm disgusted everyday during the winter here. Not a day goes by that I don't see some woman sporting some dead animal. Seal pelts are used in coat linings, as well as coats, also boot linings, glove linings. It's just gross! I make a point to ask what the material is made of. If a store sells ANY fur, I won't shop there.

[Rose Siding]

14. Fur is back in fashion?

All of a piece in the total devolution of man.

[Coventina]

22. Only if you are a brain-dead idiot

:eyes:

[jdj]

26. or a rap artist, or a fashionista a la "Sex and the City"

I love the ladies on that show individually, but I have never been so convinced of a show being industry sponsored. I am so glad to have been young in the nineties, I can't imagine being in my late teens or twenties in this decade where poor ho's are expected to spend their whole paycheck on fuzzy skin or manolo's. It's pathetic these girls have swallowed this marketing b.s. hook line and sinker. I think, personally, that this is a sign that the gap between rich and poor has expanded tremendously and that the marketers of high-end fashion are having to go after middle class and poor women to make their bottom line.

[Psephos]

21. So much for Canadian moral superiority...

This is simply barbaric.

That it takes place merely to exploit fashion demand is beyond comprehension.

[obxhead]

23. F#%*@ %#*!

[Adrian Luca]

30. Sigh...Typical Self-Righteous Blather.

Why aren't you outraged boys and girls protesting the annual slaughter of millions of shrimp?

Every year millions and millions of shrimp are murdered in order to provide a non-basic food to overweight lardasses.

Would we starve if shrimp were protected? Not on your life!

But do you guys scream and moan about shrimp boats hauling up their ghastly catches? No! Why?

This reminds me so much of the whiney stories in Australian magazines about "evil" Koreans eating puppies.

[Coventina]

31. You forgot to use the new emoticon

:sarcasm:


Because there is no way in hell to take your post seriously.

[Adrian Luca]

32. Why?

Why is a shrimp any less deserving of life than a baby harp seal?

Is it because shrimp aren't cute and furry?