THE VEGETARIAN BLOG

Great news! Today the European Parliament made history when it voted overwhelmingly to ban trade in seal products. This vote means that all three European Union (EU) institutions - the Commission, the Council, and the Parliament — are now in agreement, and seal products will no longer be placed on the market within the EU.

Europe has been a primary market for Canadian seal products, and many believe this ban spells the beginning of the end of the slaughter. This particular issue has become a cause-cèlebre for animal rights, perhaps because of the harrowing imagery that it creates as well as the sheer banality of this cruel trade. Canada’s defiance has left the world in shock for many decades.

“Closing markets saves seals’ lives. Just the prospect of an EU ban on seal product trade was enough to drive the prices for seal fur down to just $15 Canadian per skin this year — a decline of 86 percent since 2006. Many sealers chose not to hunt seals this year as a result — and to date, out of a quota of 338,200 seals, just 57,622 have been killed. It is likely that when the seal hunt officially ends on 15 May, a quarter of a million seals will have been spared a horrible death. Now that the EU has banned its trade in seal products, countless more seals will live out their lives in peace from this year forward”, said the Humane Society, one of the main organizations working towards the ban, in an official statement.

“But even as we celebrate this amazing victory, we must remain vigilant. Because there is every chance the sealing industry will develop new markets”, the organization warned. “We will continue maintaining economic pressure on Canada’s fishing industry through our boycott of Canadian seafood products. We will continue pressing for a strong law in Canada to stop commercial sealing. And we will continue to lobby other nations to ban seal products.”

Please join us as we finally put an end to the cruel slaughter of baby seals. Become a monthly supporter of Humane Society International and help us keep the pressure on Canada. We are thrilled by our success in passing this ban today, but there is still more to be done.

We are so close to putting this cruelty in the history books where it belongs — thank you for being a part of this historic campaign to save the seals. I know we can count on you to stay with us as we bring a final end to Canada’s commercial seal slaughter.

The weekend is upon us and here goes a suggestion of links for some thoughtful reading. The Missouri has a great article about the growth of animal law in academia and how cases of cruelty are being handled these days. It says:

Lewis & Clark opened the first Animal Legal Defense Fund chapter in 1992. Today it has branches at more than 115 law schools in the United States and Canada. In 2000, nine law schools had animal law studies. Today, about 100 do.

It’s a very though-provoking article for anyone interested in how animal rights activism is progressing in the courtroom.

Last year an exhibition in San Francisco that included video work showing animals being bludgeoned to death was shut down. The French artist Adel Abdessemed refused to reveal the context of the footage and so it remained unclear whether the damage done to the animals had been staged for the camera, which anyone with a hint of mercy in their blood would not condone. Now, the same artist had an exhibit suspended in Italy, for similar reasons. Doris Lin from the Animal Rights blog on About.com writes about the case.

The thing is, were an artist to deal with the theme, say, of rape, would he feel entitled to reproduce a real situation for show in a gallery? Surely not - if he or she did attempt that, he wouldn’t even get started because no gallery would touch such material.  It’s not about censorship, it’s about common sense. The same principle should apply to animals. Real violence should only be shown in documentary form, with the context very clearly marked. Otherwise it’s just sheer exploitation.