Canadian Senate Fisheries Committee meeting, the minister, Diane Lebouthillier, testified that seal meat could be rebranded as a premium product similar to lobster through federal marketing efforts. 'Listen, we have a new product we must exploit, making it a consumer product is a priority. When properly prepared, it is delicious. We did it with lobster. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel.'
PLEASE SIGN: Urge Canada to end its commercial seal hunt that beats pups to death
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The issue:
Canada’s commercial seal collapsed in 2009 after the European Union
banned the export of seal products. Now, Canada’s new Department of
Fisheries and Oceans Minister is planning to revive the struggling
industry by marketing seal meat as a seafood delicacy to Canadians.
At a Senate Fisheries Committee meeting, the minister, Diane
Lebouthillier, testified that seal meat could be rebranded as a
premium product similar to lobster through federal marketing
efforts.
"Listen, we have a new product we must exploit," said Lebouthillier
during the meeting in early February. "Making it a consumer product
is a priority. When properly prepared, it is delicious. We did it
with lobster. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel.
According to Lebouthillier plans to push seal meat are already
underway, with promotional work being done on the ground with the
hotel industry to ‘bring seal to the table’.
The move comes as Canada’s annual seal hunt gears up for the 2024
season, set to begin in just a few weeks.
Although the scale of the commercial hunt has plummeted dramatically
due to global concerns over animal welfare and numerous
international trade bans on seal goods, hundreds of thousands of
seals are still slaughtered each year.
The animals:
The controversial event is the largest authorized slaughter of
marine mammals on the planet, with seals bludgeoned, stabbed, and
shot to death. Staggeringly, 97 percent of the seals killed are pups
typically under three months old and often as young as 12 weeks old.
Scientific reports on the hunt have found that the way these babies
are killed violates Canada’s animal welfare standards and that in
42% of cases studied, there was insufficient evidence of cranial
injury to the clubbed seals to guarantee they were unconscious
during skinning.
Current plans to expand the demand for seal products is one of the
top two threats facing harp seals, alongside the rising temperatures
caused by climate change, melting their ice habitats.
Recently, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) adjusted their estimate
of the harp seal population from 7.4 million to 4.7 million. We
should be taking action to protect them from climate threats, not
finding new incentives to slaughter them.