August 19, 2005

As it enters its third year, The ProtectSeals campaign takes stock of the strides it's made in shutting down Canada's cruel seal slaughter for good. This March, ProtectSeals sent ten HSUS staff members to document the hunt, bear witness, and report what we saw.

We filmed baby seals clubbed and left to suffer on the ice before hunters skinned them. One tiny seal who had been clubbed was suffocating in her own blood for nearly an hour and a half before a hunter returned to end her misery. What we documented on the ice proved to citizens of the world that this slaughter is an affront to civilized society.

We continue working to ensure that we won't need to witness a repeat of the seal hunt in 2006.

A Look Back

We began our campaign by appealing to the Canadian government, stressing the brutality of the hunt and the fact that it was killing seals at a rate no responsible scientist could consider sustainable.

Activists contacted Canada's prime minister, tourism ministry, and fisheries ministry. Activist groups staged regular rallies outside Canadian embassies and consulates.

Senator Carl Levin took up the fight by introducing a U.S. resolution condemning the hunt, which is still gathering steam in the Senate.

A New Strategy: Socially Responsible Business

Because Canada has turned a blind eye to the humane and environmental concerns raised, we planned a new tactic: We called for a global boycott of Canadian seafood on the day the first baby seal was killed in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. March 29, 2005 marked that infamous day.

Downeast Seafood, a major seafood distributor that purchases seafood for over 250 high-end restaurants around the United States stepped up to the plate immediately, announcing that it would no longer buy snow crabs—which account for 80% of Newfoundland's fishery sales—from Canada.

Soon thereafter, other major businesses joined the boycott, including Legal Sea Foods, Spectrum Organics, Whole Foods Markets, Wild Oats Markets, Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants, and the Reel Fresh Fish Company in the United States, and Marks and Spencer in the United Kingdom. All these businesses have promised to significantly reduce or end their Canadian seafood sales until Canada ends the seal hunt for good. They were joined by many restaurants, including nationally recognized Tavern on the Green.
 
Businesses aren't alone in choosing with their consciences—consumers everywhere are asking their favorite restaurants to stop buying Canadian seafood. Our online pledge to not purchase Canadian seafood has been signed by more than 120,000 concerned individuals so far.

A new federal regulation that requires all seafood be labeled as to point of origin has also made it easier for U.S. citizens to make the choice to boycott Canadian seafood.

The boycott is taking its toll on Canada's seafood industry. The Canadian government recently announced that snow crab landings are at their lowest levels in six years, resulting in a $100 million dollar loss. In Newfoundland, where almost all sealers live, the price of snow crabs has sunk by half since last year. One of the reasons cited was that large inventories of snow crab remain unsold in the United States. This drop in demand indicates that international awareness about the seal hunt is putting a dent in the value of the snow crab industry.
 
Calling on Red Lobster

Because Red Lobster and its parent company, the Darden Restaurants, Inc., purchase significant amounts of Canadian seafood—millions of dollars worth each year—we have asked the popular seafood chain to join our boycott. We've made it clear to the company that its economic clout could tip the scales toward ending the hunt and saving untold numbers of seals from a horrible death in the next year.

To date, the number one U.S. seafood restaurant chain has adamantly refused to join the boycott. Rather than concede defeat, ProtectSeals organized.

On June 25, thousands of activists went to their local Red Lobster restaurants to request that the company stop supporting the seal hunt by buying seafood from sealers. The Darden Group recently admitted that Darden shares fell more than 4% on August 4 because sales at its Red Lobster and Olive Garden restaurant chains underperformed in July.
 
The Red Lobster Week of Action

As the opening of the 2005–2006 seal hunt approaches, we become more resolute in our efforts to convince Darden that it has a moral obligation to stop the brutality.

During the week of September 19, The HSUS will lead a Red Lobster Week of Action from Orlando,  Florida, where Darden's headquarters is located. While protesters around the country and in Canada stage their own demonstrations, we will be in Orlando as Darden investors and shareholders gather for a shareholders meeting. We want to make sure that the company understands the consequences of not joining the international campaign to end the hunt. Darden—and Red Lobster—simply cannot stand by and do nothing.

It is the company's moral obligation to work with consumers to let Canada know that the world will not tolerate its cruel and unjustifiable slaughter of seals.