(MN / 12-04-09)  Last Friday the annual seal slaughter has become in the Canadian Island Newfoundland. Canadian Government has increased in 100,000 specimens the number of legal capture. This year the law allows hunters to kill 380,000 seals.

The decision is absolutely polemic and it is thought that it is due to political criteria in response to the EU that has completely banned trading with products derived from these animals. The resolution will come into force in August. This is the last setback to an industry which is already depressed due to the declining demand and the reduction in prices –the skin costs 14 dollars nowadays, and some years ago cost 100-.

Once the European trade is close, Canada will try to get China, the Asian giant, which seems to be responding positively.

It is estimated that less than seven million seals live in Newfoundland, more than three times the seals in the island in the 70s. This increase in the population is the reason why the Government has increased the hunting fee.

However, in the last year has the species has been damaged. This winter has been the hottest in the last 60 years, and the quality of the ice where the harp seal lives has suffered a lot. In the previous year 74,581 harp seals were captured of the legal quota of 280,000. It is paradoxical that the Government has changed the limit today and that they did not do it in 2008, when they were killed 217,857 seals.

Everything can be used from the seals. Traditionally their skin was a luxury product, mainly the calves’ one, but now their meat is also used, especially to make animal feed, and their bubbler is used as oil to make soaps, in the tanning of animal skins and as lubricant. Lately new derived products have been developed and it is being investigated the use of valves of hart seals from Greenland in human cardiovascular surgery.

Ecological groups have protested soon. Last Thursday a hundred people gather outside the Canadian embassy in Madrid. Under the slogan “Canada, the world is looking at you”, the demonstrators were pleased by the EU prohibition and said that the Canadian Government “has no excuse” to keep increasing the quota. Just Norway allows the seal hunting after Russia prohibited hunting seals under one year in 2009.

The Canadian Embassy defends and argues that in their country they do not “hunt calves since 1987”, that the methods used “are not cruel” –the law obliges to use “fast and bloodless” procedures, and requires that “the death of the animal” has to be “clearly” determined before removing the skin-, that it is sustainable hunting controlled by the Ministry of Fisheries and Oceans. Furthermore, they have recalled that hunting these animals is an important source of income for thousands of families.