everyone must know about this
It is not important that I stumbled upon this site during my daily visit to cuteoverload.com . It is simply important that I found it. I try to stay abreast of current events as best I can, without sending myself into a depression spiral, but I didn't even know that this still occurred. I always thought that the seal hunt was stopped in the 50s or something. The fact that it is still done today with such flagrant disregard for current animal welfare regulations absolutely disgusts me. It is such a backward practice, something that I would not expect in this day and age.I hesitate a little bit to complain about such things to people other than my vegetarian boyfriend, because I don't want to be seen as that sort of vegetarian that acts as if she is on a holy crusade. I would never try to push my views on anyone, because it is a personal choice that I made, and there are certainly still kinks that need to be smoothed out in my vegetarian plan. (I sometimes wonder if I am being hypocritical by being only concerned with animal cruelty in slaughterhouses and not dairy farms...but I didn't think I could make the jump all the way from carnivore to vegan in one step.) I also don't want to be the type that goes "Oh look my friend told me that her friend told her that his mom told him that her hairdresser told her that x phenomenon happens, therefore it must be true." I fully intend to research this issue more. It just seemed like some fairly reliable information to start with. BUT I would think this issue would anger both the vegan and the carnivore alike, for a number of reasons.
- It would be one thing if hunting seals were absolutely necessary for the survival of a certain population, or even if seals were a huge part of the culture of the population. But it does not appear to me that this is an integral part of the culture or economy of any of the developed nations involved.
- All humans, in my opinion, must be respectful of animals, whether one uses them as food or not. I have plenty of acquaintances that eat meat that are clearly thankful for the lives of the animals that they use for sustenance, and are concerned when meat is flippantly wasted, out of respect for the animal. Thus it is not simply the fact that the seals are killed that bothers me, but that so little of the animal is actually used/consumed.
- With the modern technology that we have, it seems like the hunting practices are almost intentionally cruel. The site says that an estimate was put forth that about forty percent of the seals picked up were skinned while still conscious. It also describes the hunting methods, and while shooting is popular, many are still killed with an ice pick-like club. It astounds me that any human could beat another animal to death with such an instrument when we know how complicated their brains are, when we know that they can feel pain just as we can, and when we know much faster and more humane methods for putting them out.
posted by siobhan @ 9:48 AM
1 Comments:
Why harvest the penis?? I also am appalled - I watched Heather Mills McCartney's video on the skinning of dogs and cats in China - it is soooooooo gross. They have videos of the dogs being skinned alive, being smashed to death, and even a skinned dog looking around. So so nasty and should be stopped. It's on peta.org if you wanna see. They have some other very sad videos of chicken cruelty. I feel bad for eating meat...but it's so tasty.
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