ExKiwilass

According to the Japs "scientific research"

According to research, "Sushi"

ExKiwilass

and coleslaw.

Atlantic Xpat

So seals are more important than humans then?

This might surprise you but I tend to agree with you on that one. One of the realities of the fishery here (the seal hunt being part of the fishery with sealers being fisherman who happen to seal as well as fish) is that for most it is not a year round employment. Rather, much is focussed on getting your 16 weeks employment to ensure that you qualify for EI during the off season. As a year round worker and a year round tax payer, this rankles somewhat.

The trouble is of course that any year round employment in the fishery would be for a substantially lower number of people than are currently employed. Which would lead to unemployment, mass migration and the closure of many rural communities. I imagine similar things would happen in rural/isolated resource based communities elsewhere in Canada. Loggers, paper mill workers etc. It's that difficulty that has led to successive provincial and federal governments essentially doing bugger all about the problem. Currently, the once lucrative crab fishery is at an impasse twixt harvesters and processors (can't agree on the price), with the almost as lucrative shrimp industry likely to head the same way when it opens later in the year. The cod fishery is a shadow of it's former self, so times are grim for fishermen. Still, the oil driven economy here is booming so they can all, together with the fish plant workers, go and work on the three offshore oil installations can't they? Or go to Alberta.

Still. Seals eh? Brown eyed gits. They deserve a good clubbing if you ask me.

dbd33

"Expose" of horse slaughter in the UK:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9yPyqjDWqk

You will note that the horse is walking and appears healthy as it is led into the stall where it is shot. This is the worst Animal Aid can some up with and yet it is a world apart from the conditions in Canada.

iaink

Thread started to contain the off topic discussion in the living in canada thread.

See also previous pointless discussion of seal hunting, Paul McCartney etc etc etc....

Of course everything moves in chronological order, so now it look like someone else started this mess...

el_richo

First, let me just say that i don't necessarily agree with the battering of seals.

Now, isn't this the great privilege of being human, and at the top of the food chain? We have the ability to retain our lives as we prefer (to a point) and manipulate our surroundings for our personal benefit. The seal culling doesn't decimate its population so the environmental impact may not be as large as, say, allowing the seals to grow by upwards of 5-10% per year ensuring at some point nature will take its course by allowing many of them, and other species close to them in the food chain, to die of starvation.

Now, i may be incorrect about the over population part BUT i am correct in the human point. The house you live in and the resources you use in your daily life will have had an impact on living creatures of differing sizes and abilities. This in turn impacts the food chain attached to them. Maybe you should adapt at living in a tent and eating from the land? The point is, you cannot be selective of who and what you protect. It's either everything or nothing (with the exception of animals approaching extinction of course).

dbd33

It's not "off topic". The mistreated animals are in Canada. The abusers are in Canada. The people who choose not to eat specific animals, or any animals at all, because of cruelty issues are in Canada. Livestock issues are as much a part of life in Canada as one's choice of mall.

Atlantic Xpat

Oh to live somewhere where one would have a choice of mall......

Almost Canadian

Doesn't anybody eat them after cooking them, or is it only arty farty types that want to eat whales?

ExKiwilass

proves nothing. It's just anecdote by video. It's not proof of anything, unless there are spycams in every single barn, stall and farm in the UK.

I'm not taking it further because all I got is the stories I've heard (which are sci fi factory farming ish creepy, in terms of turning animals into strange, mutated versions of their former selves). Every society has its blind spots. I'm 100% sure the UK is no different, no matter how much it's people would like to think differently.

Like, for instance, pedigreed dogs. I need to find that english documentary about it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree_Dogs_Exposed

Take the ideas exposed in this documentary, and apply to the farm animals that no one really knows about....

imagine being a milk cow who has been bred to produce so much milk, via massive udders that are so large they can't always remain attached to the body, thus leaving the cow in excrutiating pain. Or cows that no longer go on heat, as it has been bred out of them. They can only be artificially inseminated...but the farmers don't need all those calves. Just imagine...

ExKiwilass

The paper mills are dying in BC. I wonder why it's okay for industries to die here, and not there. The same way I wonder why automobile workers are special, but that's another thread.

I guess it's politics, innit.

ExKiwilass

Um, except that this whole society (and the UK) does exactly that already. Do you eat cats? Do you think if you went out and clubbed a litter of puppies right now, no one would care, and some politician git would say "It's the Canadian way! There's overpopulation! You foreigners don't understand! It's our Cultuuuuure!"

Let nature take care of the alleged seal overpopulation. Weakest excuse EVER.

dbd33

It doesn't prove anything but if that's what the animal rights people in the UK think is cruelty at the point of slaughter it suggests a different frame of reference from Canada where that would be regarded as being humane to the point of unnecessary expense.

There's no reason to suppose that this doesn't happen in Canada. In fact, I know it does.

Flogger

Out east we find this sort of barbaric behavour by our western cousins deplorable.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-col...g-cruelty.html

Note the cute ickle fluffy ears.

el_richo

Puppies feed an industry (pardon the pun) and the population is regulated due to supply and demand, in the western world so culling is not required unless the rescue centre is over crowded maybe. Dogs and Cats are also seen and bred to be used as members of a human family / workforce and they offer a service to humans so of course slaughtering them would not be seen as right, in the western world.

As for the seal culling, this also feeds an industry and although it doesn't directly impact my way of life, as i said previously, i do not necessarily agree with it. It does, however, impact many others and i don't fault them for wanting to keep with their chosen way of life and financial security. And that's another great thing about being a human. We can select where we want to live (to a point) and manipulate the surroundings to suit our needs and wants (rightly or wrongly).

I assume you don't eat meat, eat only organic produce, do not purchase anything that is packaged, do not own leather products, do not drive a car, do not use gas / electricity, do not shop in strip malls, do not use bug spray, do not use toilet paper etc. Not obeying the examples above impact animals directly and indirectly in some way, either by displacement or death.

If you have termites, do you live with it, move house or destroy the termites? If you have moles (or the equivalent) damaging your garden constantly what do you do? If you have a family of rats in your home, what do you do? Now, if you owned a restaurant of which was your main family income and you had all of the above, what would you do?

I guess that's another great thing about being a human; you can be selective about what you consider abhorrent.