Hi,
It's me again. Hope you've all been well. I've had a bad head cold myself. The picture is from CBC's website (http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/sealhunt/).
As you all know, I'm a member of the World Wildlife Fund (I have been for more than a dozen years), I climb the CN Tower every year to raise money and awareness, I care about the environment and want to help leave our children a living planet. I'm not a member of PETA or anything radical (I'm not a terribly radical person in any way really), but I think that the earth and its inhabitants are important (and thus worth saving) for a couple of very simple reasons: 1) we haven't got another one. If we use this one up and kill everything off, then where will we go? 2) It's just mean (not to mention stupid) to eradicate something vibrant I think.
So, having said all that, I've been paying slight attention to the recent spate of celebrity visits to Canada to protest the seal hunt. Sir Paul McCartney, Brigitte Bardot and now Pamela Anderson have all weighed in (rather publicly) on how wrong the seal hunt is. They have all tried to convince our Prime Minister to stop the seal hunt. Now I remember the pictures of the little baby harp seals from the 80s; you know, the white ones, the really cute ones with the black eyes. Who wants to imagine anyone clubbing them on their little heads and then skinning them for their pelts? I certainly don't. Heck, who wants to imagine anyone clubbing their grey parents to death and skinning them? Not me. They're seals for crying out loud! We see them at the aquarium when we're kids and we go there on field trips (at least I did). Seals are fun-loving sea mammals, they don't hurt anyone; why would anyone want to club them to death?
Well, why would anyone want to slaughter a cow? Or a baby cow? Where do we get veal from? From baby cows who are confined to the point that they can't move from the moment they're born so that their meat is tender. They don't hurt anyone either. As I was looking into this further, I was thinking, maybe this is such a big deal because of the visual. Maybe people don't eat seal; I don't know. However, seals are cute looking and fun to watch when they're frolicking. Cows are not quite so cute and how many times have you seen one slaughtered? It's not something they do out in the open so that PETA can take pictures.
You may be wondering where I stand on this issue at this point... I'm still kind of wondering myself. I'm not a fan of cruelty in any form, but I've always worn leather and I started eating meat again last year. I've always eaten fish and dairy products. Does that make me cruel? I don't think so, but I guess Sir Paul would. I was looking into this because I'm not sure what to think, and apparently, during the hunt, the hunters don't skin the seals alive (which is something that I had heard), but they do kill pups (seals who are not less than 15 days old, but are less than 90 days old). I'm also still not sure what they use the seals for other than fur. I think I have a bit of a problem with that. At least we eat cows. People in the articles I read defended the seal hunt as 'traditional' and 'centuries old'. I think that traditionally, the Inuit people probably used the whole animal, (which I support), and probably took only as many animals as they needed. However, does that make the current practice wrong? The world has to change to survive.
So, I haven't solved any great dilemmas today, but I wanted to mull a bit I guess. One thing I think we can safely conclude is that celebrities who are not on the top of their game clearly still crave the spotlight.
Peace out,
ps - You still have plenty of time left to sponsor me to climb the CN Tower this year (no pressure):
https://wwfcentral.ca/NetCommunity/SSLPage.aspx?&pid=249&srcid=249&tab=1
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