Free Range Fur, Love and You
So, since I was feeling frisky, and since Andy and I have been conversing on Animal Rights, lately, I sent him a foreward of a petition from a newsgroup I belong to, protesting the renewed seal hunting industry in Canada. Andy responded by quoting a news source he discovered which quoted the CVR, that the Canadian seal hunt is no more inhumane than any other form of commercial slaughter.
Well, damn. That’s true. The words “commercial slaughter” really caught me. I mean, I’ve never seen a commercial slaughterhouse in person – I’ve just seen a few select photos from AR groups. I’ve read a few accounts from eyewitnesses. I currently work in a factory and I’ve spent a decade in foodservice, so for me, the tempo of sales meets a viscereal knife-wielding on-demand version of hell, gets all mixed up with a misbegotten variant of the protestant work ethic in which the poor are poor because they haven’t quite placed the right em-phas-is on the heaving of their bootstraps and voila, you have a thumbnail sketch of the modern meatpacking industry – Henry Miller’s Ninth Circle of Hell plus entrails, right?
What got to me was the equation. Place the Canadian seal hunt side by side with cows being marched into a slaughterhouse. Place the bloodied tidal aftermath of this incident I’m concerned with beside the lagoons of any NC pig farm. Where’s the extra concern stem from? Truth be told, I couldn’t place it.
There is something extraordinarily bothersome to me in the notion that the animals which are being hunted are being hunted across territory over which they are extremely vulnerable – seals are sea mammals and do not move adeptly on ice or land. They are being hunted, quite deliberately, right after the birthing season, during which a great majority of them will be rooted and immobile. The real focus of these hunts are the young newborn pups, if, legally, they must now be 25 days or older. My instinctive association is that this whole event reeks of walrus hunting in the Arctic, which has been likened to lampooning frigidaires (for all the skill it involves) and the mass slaughter of bison in the American West in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which extinguished the species as a whole and ruined the native populaces dependent upon them. Seal hunting is different, of course, because there are quotas involved.
Still, I couldn’t let go of that likening. What of captive bred minks? How about those mad cows? I realized, this morning, that Andy may have missed a very good point – the seal hunt in Canada could very well be described as more humane than your average commercial slaughter experience.
After all, the seals, as a whole, live their entire lives in the wilds of Canada, free of cages. Captive bred fur animals spend their whole lives in containers so small they can do little else aside from turn around. The parasites which plague them, in their en masse confinement, tend to make them so irritable, they do little else besides turn in circles, in place, for their whole lives – that’s several years. Some of them develop skin conditions so intolerable, they gnaw their own flesh down to tendon and bone. After this, if they are lucky, they are anally electrocuted. If they are unlucky, that is, they were raised for fur in China, they have their backs inexpertly broken – many of these animals are merely stunned and fully conscious while they are skinned alive.
Andy was bothered by the notion that some AR groups have placed photos of whitecoat seals on their websites, even though the hunting of these particular newborns was made illegal several years ago. I was more intrigued by one particular phrase – that the seal hunt is no more cruel than any other form of commercial slaughter, where cameras are normally not allowed.
This, after all, is the phrase which speaks volumes. The suspension of the Canadian seal hunts in the late 80’s was paved, primarily, due to it’s gruesome images, images which spoke louder than ideology, even the pragmatic ideology in which we normally take comfort “These are creatures which are natural resources, which are going to die, somehow, anyway.”
And yet, when confronted with what “natural resources” truly means, many of us were turned off, nauseated, made adament, protesting and refusatory, even.
And yet, those images were the kinder ones. Friendly seal pups being bludgeoned over the head with clubs over open territory across which they are defenseless? Those would be the rated G version of what’s going on in the commercial slaughtering industry.
When we can take this reality and say “This is the better, kinder, free-range version” it doesn’t belittle the concern for seals. It should highlight the concern underlying our use of the words “commercial slaughter” and what it means to be alive and in possession of an appetite.
Good post. And nice “turning-on-the-head” of the news-story. I mean that in the best possible way. Really. Irony doesn’t work well in text, but I intend zero of it here. I was entirely meaning to pass that news article along in the sense that you took it; if animal rights activists are hyper-concerned about seals, and seal hunting is “no more cruel…” etc., then what’s the big deal about seal hunting. It’s one of those neat, philosophical “wedge” issues that, I think, help focus people’s attention more fully on the real issues.
Which is also why I was amused (not really “bothered”) and… somewhat unsurprised to find out that AR activists are still using white seal pup pics to promote this cause, even though it is illegal to hunt the white seals at their tender young age of three weeks younger than when they can be hunten three weeks later. Which raised a question in my Evil Mr. Marketing Head:
Is white seal skin/fur — before they hit the age when the fur turns darker — significantly more valuable as a commodity than dark fur? If so, then stopping the killing of a baby seal a month or so before it turns color is, well… dumb. Unless there’s a biological reason (and I can’t find one) involving lactation of the mother or hormones or something. IE; if the only reason we’re not allowing the killing of white seals is that they’re so durn cute — but we’re still alowing them (the exact same animals) to be killed a few days/weeks later — and we’re denying the hunters income/seal, and that means they need to kill more seals to make a living… hmmm… hypocricy at its best.
I went looking to see if I could find some info on the relative value of white vs. dark seal fur. I couldn’t. Not in 10 minutes before work. I did find http://www.hsus.org/protect_seals.html. Which features all kinds of pics of white seals, which aren’t hunted anymore. And this wonderful phrase:
“Even as you read this, fishermen are clubbing and shooting baby seals in the North Atlantic, just to earn a few extra bucks by selling seal skins.”
As opposed to doing it… just for laughs? For religious reasons? To make a political point? For artistic effect? “Just to earn a few *extra* bucks.” Yeah, because I assume that those hunters are rollin’ in dough and the seal hunt is how they top off their Swiss Bank Accounts in order to add 40″ flat screen TV #4 to their Malibu condo.
Extra bucks… I wish I had some of those. Maybe I should go a’ seal huntin’.
I’m not a fan of seal hunting in particular. But I’m not a hypocrite, either. Seals aren’t endangered. This hunt seems to be, according to the (ableit one) news article I found from what seems to be a credible, balanced source, relatively well managed and as humane as you can make hunting in the natural, somewhat random setting of outdoor hunting. Will some of the seals feel pain? Yes. We’re killing them. I’m guessing that hurts even when done correctly. Will some of the hunters get hurt? Maybe even die? Maybe. You could probably absolutely minimize human suffering and death by doing some crazy shit that would make it infinitely more horrible on the seals, eh? Some kind of nerve agent dropped from helicopters, perhaps…
My point is this: when opponents/propoents of anything use inflamed and inaccurate rhetoric to make their point, they lose. At least they lose me. I want to know why something is good/bad for me. What’s your goal? What are you trying to sell me? Better health? Lowered costs? More freedom? Peace? Security? A better world for my kid? Entertainment? Less guilt? Cute and fuzzy duckies? Be clear.
If the anti-seal-hunt people came out and said, “Look. These little dudes are sooooo cute. Look at ‘em. Like puppies they’re cute. And they bark! Listen… Ooow! Ooow! Sooooo cute! We can’t club puppies! Help us stop the bad, bad mens who are clubbing the cutsey-ootsy puppies…” I’d applaud. It’s honest. But making appeals based on, “it’s so cruel,” when (comparatively) it ain’t, and “it’s only for money,” when… duh… and, what the hell’s wrong with that… well, bite me.
Give me your real reason. If the real reason is one I can get behind, I will. But if you try to snow me (pun intended), even if the reason is one I agree with… I may leave you standing because I simply don’t like unexamined politics and morality. I make bad choices all the time; but I make them with my eyes open. And I don’t try to convince anyone that they’re good choices.
I own my sin.
Comment by Andy Havens — March 31, 2006 @ 8:15 am