By Richard Norman
Few issues are as cloaked in ignorance and prejudice as the Canadian seal hunt. This vital means of income for Canada’s native people has evolved into a cruelty-free and completely sustainable enterprise; nevertheless, many in Europe continue, willfully, to see it as a "barbaric" and "inhumane" ritual that they must do everything in their powers to stop. This sort of cosmopolitanism-run-amok is a frequently observed attribute of much contemporary European thinking (for example, the recent controversy over French efforts to indict Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda). But this case is especially egregious as it targets the traditional way of life of a people who Europeans, over the centuries, have already done much to destroy. We might even think up a catchall -ism for the European position on this issue. How about Cute Baby Animal Neoconservativism?
European allegations about the Canadian seal hunt are outdated, mythic, and spurious. This site provides more detail. But this is no longer an academic debate. Now a number of Inuit hunters find themselves in the Hague forced to defend their way of life and their very livelihood. The Dutch government (and much of the rest of the EU) is considering banning Canadian seal products in response to appeals from emotional special interest groups. From today’s Globe and Mail:
Aaju Peter and her teenage son Aggu made the journey yesterday from Nunavut to the Netherlands to make a point for the Canadian government, one rarely heard by Dutch protesters: The seal hunt is a good thing.
"I want to let these people know that we hunt the seals for food to eat and for coats to wear," Ms. Peter said yesterday shortly after arriving in the Netherlands. "Here in Europe, they believe a lot of myths about the seal hunt. I want to tell them that this is my way of life, my tradition, my right."
It is a long journey for Ms. Peter to make only to be heckled by people who know nothing of her country or way of life. The further 6000 Northern and Atlantic Canadians who make their living on the seal trade will have to stay close to their radios to hear what the European capitals far across the ocean declare in their assemblies–just as they once visited local trading posts, before the time of radios, to learn what distant governments had decided in their scramble to gain access to the lucrative fur and skins markets of colonial Canada.
If these protesters spent half of the energy they devote to sabotaging the Canadian seal trade on helping the good people of the Balkans improve their institutions and infrastructure, engaging the Belorussian regime, or working with Russia and Moldova to resolve the Transnistria issue, they might improve the lives of their own citizens instead of destroying the livelihood of foreigners.
Yes, it is clear that the main reason people protest the seal hunt is because 1) Baby seals are cuter than baby aardvarks (for example); 2) Everyone wants to go to a protest event that involves Brigitte Bardot and Paul McCartney. However, I do believe that there is a difference between killing of animals that causes unnecessary suffering (like much of the poultry industry) and that which is quick and painless (aka the seal industry). And that we should do what we can to avoid the former. Why protesters are not staging rallies against unnecessarily cruel killing in their own animal industries and instead focusing on a foreign industry that actually AVOIDS inflicting unnecessary pain is a question I do not know the answer…
There is really no moral basis for opposing the seal hunt any than there is a moral basis to oppose the killing of any animal that is not endangered and that is serving an economic purpose. I will never understand why people consider killing seals any worse than cows, pigs, etc. There is certainly no reason they should be tried at the hague. I understand that some of these people are vegetarians, so their positions are consistent, but I hope we have not come to the point where I will be tried for the two different animals that I ate for lunch today.
Also, I have never been able to understand the meaning of “humane” killing of animals, any more than I can understand the concept of humane killing of human beings.