While Canadian government representatives have described the annual seal slaughter as "98 percent humane," the European Food Safety Authority has termed this description "scientifically incorrect."

In 2007, an independent panel of veterinary and zoology experts from the European Union studied Canada's commercial seal hunt. Their shocking report concluded that:

• more than 80 percent of shot seals were not killed with the first bullet,
• nearly 40 percent of clubbed seals were not even rendered unconscious with the first blow,
• in 44 percent of cases, seals showed responses to stumuli after being impaled on metal hooks and dragged,
• in 67 percent of cases, sealers did not bother to ensure seals were dead or unconscious prior to moving or skinning them.

The report noted a widespread disregard for regulations by sealers and a failure by authorities to enforce the law.

The panel concluded that all methods used to kill seals in Canada are inherently inhumane given the environment in which the seal slaughter occurs, and should be prohibited.

More Than Half a Century of Scutiny

Over the half century during which Canada's commercial seal hunt has been the subject of veterinary scrutiny, not one report has ever found the seal hunt to be "humane." The veterinary evidence is supported by the testimony of independent journalists, parliamentarians and scientists who observe and document the commercial seal hunt each year.

Footage from the commercial seal hunt consistently shows conscious pups stabbed with boathooks and dragged across the ice, wounded pups left to choke on their own blood and conscious seal pups cut open.

Agony Caught on Film

The following is a transcript of the film, "Rebecca's Journal: Time to End Cruel Hunt," dated 13^th April 2008—where Rebecca Aldworth, director of Humane Society International/Canada, reports on a truly devastating sight, filmed in what can only be described as an open-air slaughterhouse during the 2008 commercial seal slaughter. The film starts as sealers approach three seal pups on an ice pan:

The three seal pups obviously sense danger nearby. Two of them are shot; one has just been hit, one has fallen into the water.

The seal who is in the water is bleeding, visible from a thousand feet in the air [the footage has been filmed from a helicopter].

The other [third] seal, I think, has escaped without being shot.

The seal who is on the ice who has been shot is writhing in agony and the seal pup in the water is still bleeding.

Now, a sealer has hooked the seal pup in the water though the flipper.

On the ice, a sealer is clubbing the seal pup who was still conscious, but wounded.

The seal pup on the ice is being thrown into the boat, tossed like garbage, onto other seal carcasses.

The seal pup in the water is being hoisted onboard the boat by the flipper and again tossed on to a pile of dead and dying seals.

And what is really shocking here is that the sealer doesn't even stop to club this baby seal to ensure this seal is dead, he doesn't check to see that she's unconscious, he just cuts her open from top to bottom, slices her open.

And then the carcass of the other seal pup is thrown overboard.

Are Sealing Practices Monitored? Are Violations Acted Upon?

Since 1998, animal protection groups have submitted video evidence of more than 700 apparent violations of the Marine Mammal Regulations—including seals being skinned alive. To date, not a single charge has been laid in response.

It would be a practical impossibility for the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) to adequately monitor the seal hunt.

Canada's commercial seal hunt is conducted with hundreds of fishing vessels, by thousands of sealers, over hundreds of miles of ocean. Adequately monitoring the seal hunt would be a practical impossibility even if the Canadian government had the political will to do so.

Currently, the DFO in the Gulf of St. Lawrence says it has one enforcement officer present for every seven sealing vessels—about one person for every 80 sealers. In 2003, the Charlottetown Guardian reported that the DFO enforcement budget for patrol hours allocated only 1.5 percent to monitoring the seal hunt. In the "front" (northeast of Newfoundland) there is virtually no monitoring of the seal hunt at all by the DFO. Moreover, the few enforcement people who do attend the seal hunt are usually there to check quotas and hunting permits—not treatment of the animals.

While the DFO may occasionally lay charges against sealers, the cases usually involve violations such as hunting without a proper license, and normally result in warnings or small fines. The inadequate monitoring and token fines make it economically worthwhile for sealers to continue violating the Marine Mammal Regulations.