With Fur on Our Side

Working Through the Rhetoric of the Anti-Sealing Campaign
by Brit Griffin

HighGrader Magazine Christmas 1997

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Under the banner of a bloodied maple leaf, 25 prominent Canadians have served notice that the battle to end the east coast seal hunt is far from over. The full-page ad placed in major Canadian dailies marks the latest salvo in a 30-year campaign waged by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) to end what it calls the "largest slaughter of marine mammals in the world." The signatories to the ad, including Cynthia Dale, Stephen Fearing, Loreena McKennitt and William Shatner, are the latest in a long line of celebrities that have been enlisted in the ranks of the anti-sealing crusade.

Rick Smith is Director of the Canadian office of IFAW. He explains the use of celebrities: "Our hope in launching this campaign is that this group of prominent Canadians will start the ball rolling. We are hoping that ordinary Canadians across the country will look at this group and say, 'yeah, I like Loreena McKennitt's music, I can really associate with her, let me take a closer look at what she is prepared to identify with on a personal level.' Those 25 folks were good enough to put their personal credibility on the line because they felt strongly about it."
But is the seal hunt wrong, cruel or unsustainable simply because Cynthia Dale or William Shatner say so? Is it enough to know that Loreena McKennitt thinks the commercial seal hunt should be ended? What about the perspectives of the Inuit sealers or Newfoundlanders who have lived off the spring seal hunt for generations?
Tina Fagan of the Canadian Sealers Association (CSA) says that, as far as she knows, none of the 25 signatories contacted the Sealers Association to get another perspective. "It really annoys me that no one (of the signatories) contacted us. How do you make an informed decision to support or not support something of this nature without looking at both sides. You have to wonder how much effort they put into trying to find out the truth. I think it's time for Scottie to beam William Shatner back up to Fantasy Land."
Indeed the question facing Canadians is how do you make an informed decision about a way of life that the vast majority of us find totally unfamiliar. Perhaps like the 25 Canadians who signed on to the IFAW campaign, most of us are likely to hear only one side of the story, brought to us courtesy of IFAW.
The IFAW ad campaigns are characterized by a highly sensationalist approach pioneered by founder Brian Davies. Images of baby seals and bloodied snow have become synonymous with the organization's advertising prowess both here and abroad. Some of the more memorable ad campaigns have included a picture of Jeffrey Dahmers, equating opponents of animal protection with the cannibalistic serial killer (which was eventually pulled), and a photo of John Bobbitt's severed penis beside a butcher knife, asking why people got upset about the Bobbit castration when thousands of seal meet the same fate.
True to form, the latest ad campaign promises the Canadian public "horrifying facts". The ad claims that sealers took twice their legal limit and that tax payers are shoring up a failing industry. It ends with the kicker: "It's terrible. And it's all true." So says IFAW.  But determining truth in the sensationalist high-powered campaigns waged by IFAW is like trying to get your bearings after slipping through the looking glass.

"Until her (Brigitte Bardot) arrival, the seal hunt story was all blood and death. But now it was blood and death and sex. No more potent combination could be put together."
- Robert Hunter, signatory to latest IFAW ad.

Today we are seeing the first generations to have had no contact with the land, with animals, with raising and harvesting their own food. While part of this generation has felt this loss and tries to go "back to the land", most have chosen to lash out at those who still live close to nature..."
-Alan Herscovici, author

When is a Baby Not a Baby?
Click on any of the many images contained on the IFAW web-site and you will see a familiar face Ñ the cute and defenseless seal pup with the pristine white pelt and the Bambi eyes. Never mind that the baby seal is no longer hunted. During the 1970s and 80s the public (particularly in Europe) responded to the baby seal with an affection that was nothing short of mystifying. IFAW waged a publicity campaign with ruthless media savvy, hammering home a simple visual 'either/or': either the cuddly seal in its natural state or the scene of carnage on the snow.
The cute/cruel dichotomy presented a predominately urban audience with a simple question: what kind of monsters could be so cruel as to want to slaughter such a defenseless animal?  The strong visceral response to the baby seal blew away any arguments sealers could muster. Greenpeace activist Bob Hunter pointed out the irony of affluent Europeans flocking to the banner of the baby seal: "...the depths of emotion that the killing of 'babies' generated  in the breasts of millions of urban people, who otherwise, with their cars and swimming pools and electric gadgets, were the worst environmental destroyers of all...."
IFAW succeeded (along with Greenpeace) in shutting  down the European market for white seal pelts in the 1980s. Ultimately, the Canadian government bowed to the demands of the Europeans and banned the hunting of baby seals.
The image of the baby seal catapulted IFAW into a $50 million a year business with offices in 14 countries and with top CEOs taking home salaries in the six figure bracket. This victory cemented IFAW's position as a big player in the animal rights game. And so, even though the baby seal is no longer an issue, IFAW continues to stick with the line that sells.
According to IFAW's web-page, the present spring hunt is still about the slaughter of baby seals. Amidst the click-on icons of baby white coats (complete with cute downloadable screen savers) they make the claim that "...some 200,000 baby seals, animals that are just days or weeks old, and thousands of older harp and hooded seals were slaughtered in Canada in 1996..."
Official estimate place the total seal harvest at 260,000 for the 1996 hunt. During that hunt, some 2,000 white coat seal pups plus several thousand blue backs were taken illegally (the sealers involved were subsequently charged). It hardly matches the 200,000 figure being bandied about by IFAW.
If you dig far enough into the IFAW claim, it becomes clear that many of what IFAW defines as "babies" are seals mature enough to be on their own. White coats are weaned at two-weeks and lose their distinctive coat at this time. The blue-back is weaned at four days, although it can retain its coat for over a year. Once they have been weaned, the seals are on their own. As far as their mothers are concerned, they are no longer babies and there is no more family contact. But unlike mother seals, IFAW maintains that seals up to a year old (known as beaters) are still babies and are consequently worthy of stirring in their supporters the misplaced maternalism that fueled so much of the anti-sealing support in the 1970s.

The numbers game continues with IFAW's claim that in 1997 east coast sealers killed half a million seals, twice the legal limit. The DFO figure for the same years was  261,354. Why the discrepancy? The source of the IFAW figure comes from an observation made by a DFO official and subsequently reported in the Ottawa Citizen (June 25, 2997).  IFAW claims that the trade in seal penises, sold as an aphrodisiacs in Asian markets, is resulting in the killing of thousands of male seals solely for the sex organs. Apparently, several sealing boats were found by the DFO to have the same number of seal pelts as seal penises. Since  roughly half of the harvest should include females it does not add up that there would be equal numbers of pelts and penises.
The claim of 500,000 killed was made despite the fact that the matching number of pelts and penises were only found on only a small percentage of the over 200 vessels in the hunt. As well, Edward Miller, the Memorial University biologist who suggested in the same article that the DFO figures were low, still dismisses the 500,000 estimate as a "wild figure". This "wild figure" however, has become a cornerstone in the new campaign.

The Seal Penis Market
Lately there has been much talk in the media about the international trade in animal parts. With international attention drawn to this issue, the  trade in seal penises is starting to rival the baby seal as an IFAW marketing tool. The fear of a growing Asian demand for seal penises has struck a chord with the public and as Smith points out, most Canadians find the trade in seal penises "abhorrent". According to Smith, the penis is also "... the most lucrative part of the seal. You can go down to traditional Chinese markets and buy them for $500."

Sealers scoff at such claims, stating the most they can get for a seal penis is between $15 and $20, tops. This price raises the question of why a sealer would deliberately discard a female pelt, especially given the fact that at the end of last years season a good pelt could fetch $28.
Despite claims that there is a growing demand for seal sex organs, there is evidence that the market isn't as rapacious as IFAW would have the public believe. John Ackerman runs Indian Bay Frozen Foods in Newfoundland (one of the processors buying seal products). He says the market just isn't there. "I've never had buyers like they (IFAW) claim. I was in China, I was in Taiwan, I was in Japan, I was in Seoul, Korea, and there was no big market. If there is such a market for seal penises, why have I had some here on consignment for over a year? When I come across people saying that I ask them to give me the fax number of whose buying them because I'd like to know. It's  nothing but a nuisance."

"The world has always been against seal hunting. Canada's plan to spend even more taxpayers' dollars on destroying even more seals is morally and environmentally irresponsible. Seal hunting is extremely cruel and totally unnecessary."
- Richard Moore, Executive Director, IFAW (Britain)

Subsidizing the Hunt
The latest IFAW ad warns Canadians that their tax dollars are subsidizing the 'slaughter' of seals. They maintain that the commercial seal hunt is dependent on a false economy and that the hunt would not be profitable if it weren't for government subsidies. IFAW points to the 20 cent subsidy on seal meat introduced by the government in 1995. What IFAW does not mention is that the subsidy will be gone by the end of the century. Tina Fagan of the CSA explains: "It is a declining subsidy. In the first year, the combined Federal and Provincial subsidy was in the vicinity of $2 million, the second year it was 1.25 million. By 1999 it will be $300,000 and then in the year 2000 it will nothing, absolutely zilch."
Alan Herscovici, author of Second Nature: The Animal Rights Controversy, defends the subsidies. "If it wasn't for this mega-protest industry that has developed with this high-powered advertising that destroyed  the sealer's market, you wouldn't need subsidies. In fact maybe you could make the case that the subsidies really went to support IFAW because if the sealers weren't kept alive then IFAW wouldn't be able to campaign to raise funds! It's a funny  society when you make more money attacking something than the people who actually produce something make."

The sealing protests of the 1970s and '80s had a devastating effect on the sealing communities of Newfoundland, the Magdalene Islands and for the Inuit hunters of the north. In northern Inuit communities where milk runs at $10 a litre, the hunt provided families with a bare subsistence. When the European markets were closed, the combined annual earnings of the Inuit seal hunt in the Northwest Territories went from $1 million to $17,000. The impact was socially devastating and tarnished IFAW's swashbuckling image.
Ian McPhail, a one time coordinator of IFAW's British wing,  didn't help matters when he brushed the issue aside during an 1996 interview on CBC radio: "I don't want to be sarcastic but I can't help noting that the noble savages are frightfully well dressed. One of them is wearing a gold Rolex watch which I can't afford. I think they should be awfully careful about doing the Nanuk-of-the-North/starving-in-igloos story because I don't think there are many really genuine noble savages living on the land on what nature provides. I would like to meet one. I would like to shake him by the hand."
IFAW's Canadian Director, Smith, is quick to distance himself from the stance taken by McPhail. Smith stated that the comments were embarrassing and unrepresentative. The Inuit, however, did not see McPhail's comments as an aberration in IFAW philosophy. In fact, it was efforts by the Inuit community that caused the prestigious World Conversation Union (IUCN) to refuse IFAW admission by a vote of 30 to 1 in 1994.
Smith maintains that the hard feelings of the Inuit could be overcome with better dialogue. "We differentiate between commercial hunting and other forms of hunting. We oppose the cruelty and conservation problems inherent in commercial hunting, we do not oppose subsistence hunting. This is a point we are trying to clarify with the Inuit community. Unfortunately this distinction one of the things that got confused at the World Conservation Union."
Mervyn Anderson is with the Labrador Inuit Association. "We weren't confused. We understand perfectly. The seal hunt provided a major part of our income. We would go sealing in the spring and that would carry us over and give us a bit of money for the fishing in the summer. We had a continuous income with the different species. Then these animal rights people came along and everything fell out from under us. The whole industry collapsed."

"...our boycott of Canadian fish products must continue and intensify until these 'men of violence' ply their cruel trade no more."
Ñ IFAW fundraising letter, Brian Davies

"What is really unpleasant about these campaigns is this moral arrogance towards anybody who works on the land and works with their hands and gets dirty. ...These campaigns often pass for being left-wing or progressive but I think its just the opposite. I think they are vicious campaigns that attack working people."
Ñ Alan Herscovici

From the beginning, opposition to the seal hunt was portrayed as a massive morality play about human cruelty. IFAW has gone the distance to bring these cruelties to the public in living colour. They claim they have documented widespread cruelty including instances of seals being wounded, clubbed to death, skinned alive and killed just for their sex organs. At the IFAW web-site you can even download Quicktime movies of animals supposedly being skinned alive (although its impossible to discern what is actually taking place in these clips).
Herscovici suggests that many of these claims just don't make sense. "The simple question is, why on earth would you want to skin a live seal? It's very dangerous, you're working with sharp knives, why skin it live when they are so easy to kill."

But underlying the success of IFAW's $50 million a year business is the fact that their target audience is unfamiliar with the tactile grittiness of rural life. For people who do not have any connection with the way food or fur is handled, the images of blood and gore immediately spark revulsion. But is blood on an ice flow  in any way worse than blood on the floor of an abattoir?
In the world of IFAW advertising such questions never get raised. The potential supporter is provided a simple either/or: either you oppose the hunt and are morally superior or you condone the base and  barbaric. The subtext works on a willingness to believe that maritime and indigenous communities are not only capable of needless cruelty as they go about their work, they are somehow incapable of not being cruel. 
In an age when few Canadians live off the land, the ability to deconstruct this stereotype has greatly diminished. These days, resource-dependant lifestyles just don't seem to attract the celebrities.   

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