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urbpanI haven't posted about any controversial topics lately, but I just read an article about seal hunting (best headline ever: Cute, cuddly, edible) that got me interested. I've read posts from people on my friends list from people that were passionate about the topic, from pro and con perspectives. I'd love to hear discussion here, but let's keep it civil and above the belt, okay?
The article (click the headline link above to read it) is quite level in tone and does a good job of presenting the less-well-known pro-seal hunting side of the story. Ecologically speaking, the Canadian seal hunt is quite sustainable; in other words, at the level that seals are being hunted, the practice could continue for a long time without having an impact on the total seal population or the environment. This is more you can say for much of the fishing industry, or even the petroleum industry for that matter.
But what of the spectacle of beefy men bloodily whacking cute seals on the head with pointed clubs (which I learned from the article are called "hakapiks")? Surely this display of barbarism is cruelty to animals at its most graphic. According to "a study published in the Canadian Veterinary Journal," 98% of the clubbings are considered humane. This percentage far exceeds, for example, the rates of successful humane slaughter performed in North American cattle and pig processing plants (http://204.200.219.26/survey/2007.restaurant.audits.html). A hakapik in proficient hands is more humane than a rifle shot (sometimes suggested as a middle ground between hunt-banners and seal-clubbing).
I think this comes back to what the McCartneys said: "If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian." What is meant by this is that the acceptance of meat eating requires a certain amount of denial. If the seals were clubbed in a windowless cinderblock building instead of out on a treeless landscape in front of cameras, there wouldn't be a serious effort to ban the hunt.
No one wants to watch animals be killed, and yet most people want to eat meat. What moral grounds does a seal-hunt ban have? Should those who support a ban on the Canadian seal-hunt themselves be banned from eating meat? How long until a performance artist builds a glass-walled slaughterhouse?
The article (click the headline link above to read it) is quite level in tone and does a good job of presenting the less-well-known pro-seal hunting side of the story. Ecologically speaking, the Canadian seal hunt is quite sustainable; in other words, at the level that seals are being hunted, the practice could continue for a long time without having an impact on the total seal population or the environment. This is more you can say for much of the fishing industry, or even the petroleum industry for that matter.
But what of the spectacle of beefy men bloodily whacking cute seals on the head with pointed clubs (which I learned from the article are called "hakapiks")? Surely this display of barbarism is cruelty to animals at its most graphic. According to "a study published in the Canadian Veterinary Journal," 98% of the clubbings are considered humane. This percentage far exceeds, for example, the rates of successful humane slaughter performed in North American cattle and pig processing plants (http://204.200.219.26/survey/2007.restaurant.audits.html). A hakapik in proficient hands is more humane than a rifle shot (sometimes suggested as a middle ground between hunt-banners and seal-clubbing).
I think this comes back to what the McCartneys said: "If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian." What is meant by this is that the acceptance of meat eating requires a certain amount of denial. If the seals were clubbed in a windowless cinderblock building instead of out on a treeless landscape in front of cameras, there wouldn't be a serious effort to ban the hunt.
No one wants to watch animals be killed, and yet most people want to eat meat. What moral grounds does a seal-hunt ban have? Should those who support a ban on the Canadian seal-hunt themselves be banned from eating meat? How long until a performance artist builds a glass-walled slaughterhouse?
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Date: 2008-06-03 02:24 am (UTC)And anytime ANYthing is killed just so a person can wear their skin for vanity's sake, I'm offended by that. You're starving? Fine. Eat it. You're freezing? Fine, wear it. IF you don't have another option. You want to torture the poor thing while you're killing it? Here, let me get Biblical eye-for-an-eye on your ass. It's inane to say we respect life, but only in certain forms: cute, cuddly, pets.
"The question is not 'can they reason' or 'can they think', but 'can they SUFFER?'"
I don't think it's wrong to eat meat/animals. I think it's wrong to cause them pain or fear. I'd be fine with getting my meat from a local farmer who humanely kills them, one at a time, instead of the conveyor belt factory farming method, only because the latter has too many slip-ups in the process. (I'm on a waiting list for a local met CSA. A waiting list! Imagine. We've come a long way, baby. ;-)) No, of course I don't want to watch it. But if that was the price of getting the meat, then it's the least I can do: be aware, not in denial.
If I had to kill my own meat, yeh, I'd be a vegetarian. I blame it on growing up on Disney.
*(clubbing anything, actually, seems brutal, but "baby" anything brings out the nurturing in most humans, especially females. I remember reading an article about the movie Dragon Slayer, in which the guy who designed the baby dragons our hero has to kill along the way said he found it impossible to make them look young and also not "cute", because anytime something has a babyish face, we're genetically programmed, so they say, to want to protect/nurture it.)