Addressing Canada’s seal regs from a vegan perspective

To the Department of Fisheries and Oceans:

On behalf of Friends of Animals, an international organization with offices in Canada and the U.S., I hereby respond to your call for comments on the suitability of increasing the space legally allowed between observers and the government-sanctioned seal killing off the Newfoundland and surrounding coastal areas.

Our view is this: The distance is irrelevant. We want it to be known that there is nothing left to document. Little if anything has ever been accomplished from efforts to document this killing event. We do not need more degrading footage of people killing seals. The time has come to support residents of a depressed economy in ways that acknowledge both the inherent worth of human beings and the lives of sea animals.

The question is not if the killing is cruel, or how cruel the killing is. The question is when the government of Canada will stop issuing quotas and rules and using the seals as substitutes for a real economic solution to the situation of coastal residents. Filming the kill and issuing penalties against the people engaged to carry it out does not address the root problem but instead exacerbates it.

This pointless deliberation over rules and regulations is another waste of Canadian resources that would be better directed into the provisions of real economic and social solutions.

Dave Shiskoff
Canadian Correspondent
Friends of Animals