Stop the cruel and needless slaughter of Harp Seals on the Canadian ice floes.

The Right Honourable Stephen Harper
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, ON
K1A 0A2
CANADA

Dear The Right Honourable Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada,

 We are writing to request that you end, immediately, once and for all, the economically feeble, unsustainable, cruel, needless slaughter of Harp Seals on the Canadian ice floes and that you support a Government buyout, which would help sealers transition out of this dead industry.

We were shocked to learn that the Canadian Government still allows thousands of Seals to be slaughtered each year, especially given that the U.S., the European Union, Taiwan, Mexico, Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus - which had been importing 95% of Canadian seal pelts - have all banned seal-fur imports.

More than 76,000 Seals have already been slaughtered this year. The vast majority of them are baby Seals just starting to shed their white coats.

It’s time to end the seal slaughter once and for all. This is a cruel commercial hunt for seal fur and seal parts that 30 countries, all the European Union and Russia included, have now banned for sale.

There’s no question that the commercial seal hunt is on the way out. It’s an economic loser: over 15 years of Government subsidies, resulting in the waste of tens of millions of Canadian taxpayers’ dollars, has failed to create a viable sealing industry.

The value of the Newfoundland and Labrador seal hunt all last year was less than $1.5 million. One million dollars directly, with another $400,000 in food, fuel, ammunition and other related spinoffs.

The $1 million the commercial seal slaughter generated last year is a fraction of one percent of Canadian economy worth tens of billions of dollars. Sealers took only 40,000 Seals last year. That’s all the market would buy. They made about $25 a pelt.

That’s pretty weak when held up against the enormous black eye it gives to your Country on the World stage.

There is a strong call around the World for an international boycott of Canadian’s tourism and export products to bring about an end to your Country's annual seal hunt.

We oppose the seal hunt and we are boycotting Canadian tourism, especially in Newfoundland, Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and the Magdalen Islands of Quebec, until the seal hunt is banned permanently. By boycotting tourism to Canada, we can pressure, as seal hunt opponents, the Canadian Government and sealers to change their stance on the seal hunt.

Despite the sealers’ struggle to make the industry the most humane and dignified possible, the war has been lost.

And it is impossible to make the seal hunt humane. Shooting Seals from a moving boat, then hooking them in the face, then skinning them alive - this is what has been documented and passed on as proof of the hunt’s inherent cruelty.

Investigators have hours of videotape which exposes the horrific cruelty of these hunts: Seals beaten with clubs, live baby Seals impaled on boat hooks and Seals shot and left to drown under the ice.

This is one of the most massive marine mammal slaughter in the World.

Every year thousands baby Harp Seals, pups as young as just three weeks old, are beaten to death, shot, clubbed or even hooked and dragged while still alive by seal hunters in Canada in one of the saddest, cruelest commercial hunts known to Man.

Every Seal, every single one, is a living and breathing being – capable of fear, of suffering in agonizing pain, and of caring so dearly for their young as they nurse them on the ice.

And all for what? A seal fur hat? Or seal fur gloves? The market places of seal products are now mostly closed down around the World. And the World Trade Organization upholds EU ban in order to keep this market closed for good.

We urge Canadian Government to reject the Government subsidies to the commercial seal hunt, which are a cynical attempt to procure Canadian taxpayers’ money to breathe life back into a dying industry.

We ask that you rescind this anti-common-sense, economically feeble, unsustainable, cruel, needless slaughter of Harp Seals in Canada and we ask that you instead adopt a policy that supports a Government buyout, which would help sealers transition out of this dead industry, and considers the significance, the biological importance and the ecological value and size of Harp Seals.

Let’s celebrate Canadian’s economic power and cultural heritage without cruelty and relegate to the history books the economically feeble, unsustainable, cruel, slaughter of Harp Seals on the Canadian ice floes.

Sincerely,

Prof. Patrizia Petrolati, Dr. Fabio Schiassi

Via dell’Uccellino 18

40141 Bologna

Italy

E-mail:patrizia.petrolati@libero.it; fabio.schiassi@alice.it