Flipper pie

I have been trying to get my head round the issues involved in the seal cull, and yesterday, the Guardian's Canadian correspondant, Anne McIlroy gave an account of at least some of the concerns and I have asked a number of Canadians.

The first question I suppose that needs answering is whether the seal cull is necessary. There are two arguments for it that I have been made aware of.
One is that unchecked, the seal population becomes large enough to deplete fish numbers. This might mean that levels are unsustainably low and the fish are unable to repopulate, or that the fishing industry cannot make a living because quotas have to be reduced.
The second reason is that Newfoundlanders rely very heavily on the seal cull for their livelihood. This argument presents Newfoundlanders as using every part of the seal, meat, blubber, oil and even the flippers, yes, flipper pie is a real dish on the East coast of Canada, in the same way that plains First Nations people used every part of the buffalo.

When the Canadian seal cull is reported in the popular press, it is generally done in a very emotive way, showing old pictures of white coated baby seals being clubbed to death. Whenever an argument has to be presented in this fashion it immediately makes me think that there is a weak argument being advanced. As Anne McIlroy points out in her article, it is no longer legal to cul the nursing pups, ie the ones with the white coats, nor the mothers. She also states however that the pups only nurse for a few weeks, they are therefore legally fair game at only a few weeks old, but again the other side of that is that at a few weeks old they are independent animals and their life cycles must not be judged in human terms.

For me personally, the central question is how the seals are killed. I feel that McIlroy doesn't deal adequately with this.
I have been told that they are no longer clubbed, they are shot. I would have no problem with this, I do after all eat meat, in doing so I have to accept that someone kills them on my behalf, I even eat the flesh of mammals, there must be blood involved. I would NOT eat meat if I thought it had been killed or raised in an inhumane way, so it is important to me that this information is available and that I am aware of it. I know for example that these are concerns of both Alex and Hazel and I understand that Hazel is a vegan because she doesn't feel that animal husbandry is humane.

In the article, McIlroy alludes to concerns about whether seals are skinned while still alive and there is a reasonable response to this, however I think that this does make the process less clear cut. The argument that animals do have automotive responses post mortem is true. But it could also be that the animals have been skinned alive, in which case it implies that they are not in fact shot. A difficult one and I think individual opinion on this is going to be based on whether one has confidence in the food and fishing ministries of the country. I haven't been here long enough to make that call.

There are observers to the cull and I feel it would be helpful to both sides if those observers were not hindered. So-called activists on the other hand, anger the people who are doing the cull and achieve little except to garner support for those they are trying to stop. There needs to be more transparency so that there can be no argument that guidelines are being followed and if they are not, then there must be prosecutions and this too must be seen.