HSUS and honesty are two words that will never be associated without the tag Dishonest added to HSUS adjectives.

Article 1


Western Star (Newfoundland, CAN)
REGIONAL NEWS
Reasons for decline in seafood exports cause for debate
ST. JOHN'S
PETER WALSH
Transcontinental Media
19/03/08
http://www.thewesternstar.com/index.cfm?sid=118591&sc=506

Whoever coined the phrase 'numbers don't lie' likely never debated the
Canadian seal hunt. Take, for example, the decline in Newfoundland
seafood exports to the United States. It's a fact that exports have
declined in recent years. The reasons for that decline, however, are
in wild dispute this week.

On Monday, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) linked the
decline directly to its US boycott of Canadian seafood products. HSUS
organizes the boycott to protest Canada's seal hunt. However, the
federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans says the boycott has played
almost no effect in the export decline.

HSUS quotes Industry Canada statistics that show Newfoundland seafood
exports to the US have dropped from more than $1 billion 2004 to $787
million last year. HSUS said Monday its boycott is "having a clear
impact, and is providing a strong incentive for Canada's fishing
industry to sever its ties with the cruel and needless seal
slaughter."

"Trade data doesn't lie," HSUS director Rebecca Aldworth told
Transcontinental Media. "The fact is seafood exports from Canada and
in particular from Newfoundland are on a distinct decline and that
decline has occurred specifically within the time frame of the seafood
boycott which was launched by HSUS in 2005."

HSUS says its boycott contributed to a 44 percent decline in seafood
exports from Newfoundland to the US since 2004 and a 22 percent
overall Canadian decrease since 2004. HSUS says 550,000 people and
3,500 businesses have joined its boycott. HSUS says many business
owners say they would like the seal hunt to end so they can again sell
Canadian seafood products.

DFO has an entirely different interpretation.

"(The decline) has zero to do with HSUS," said DFO spokesman Phil
Jenkins. "This is just an attempt to mollify its followers that what
they're doing is actually anything worthwhile. It is has almost zero
effect." Jenkins says the decline is due to a variety of factors
including the U.S.-Canada exchange rate, high fuel prices, a glut of
Alaskan crab and even Hurricane Katrina.

"They put out all this misinformation and gullible people swallow it
whole," said Jenkins.

HSUS disputes the meaning of other economic factors.

"All exports from Canada to the U.S. face the same exchange rate and
fuel issues," said HSUS director Pat Ragan "In exactly the same
economic conditions and time period that seafood exports have
collapsed, exports from non-seafood industries in Newfoundland are up
by a wide margin."

The Telegram
19/03/08


Article 2:

SEAFOOD.COM NEWS
Humane society loses all credibility with false seal boycott claims
by John Sackton
March 17, 2008 –
http://www.seafoodnews.com/sub/news.asp?key=428927

One of the key requirements of any public education campaign is that
it tell the truth. If a campaign cannot face the truth, but instead
claims things that are demonstrably false, it is a sign of bad faith,
and means that the group is trying to mislead the public.

This is exactly the situation the Humane Society of the U.S., the
organizers of the Canadian Seal boycott, find themselves in this
morning.

Regardless as to the merits of whether killing seals is a moral issue,
the Humane Society has based its measurements of success on whether
there has been a decline in the value of Newfoundland seafood exports.

Today, they put out a press release claiming credit for just such a
decline: from 2004 to 2007, they said, the value of Newfoundland
seafood exports to the U.S. declined 44% from 2004, the year before
their boycott started. During this same period, the value of the U.S.
dollar declined by 33%. It seems like the Humane society is claiming
credit for devaluing the U.S. dollar.

Further, they say that unlike seafood, other Newfoundland exports have
risen in value. They neglect to say that the other primary export is
oil. As we all know, oil prices have gone up by a factor of nearly
300% since 2004, greatly outstripping any change in currency values.

The problem with the Humane Society is that they are dishonest. By
their yardstick, if trade increases it should mean that their boycott
is having no effect.

If you look at the value of Newfoundland's seafood exports in 2007 vs.
2006, you will see that both the the U.S., and to the world as a
whole, seafood sales have increased by 18% over the prior year.

All exports from Canada to the U.S. face the same exchange rate and
fuel issues, Pat Ragan director of the ProtectSeals campaign points
out. In exactly the same economic conditions and time period that
seafood exports have collapsed, exports from non-seafood industries in
Newfoundland are up by a wide margin. The boycott Ð not the exchange
rate Ð is specifically targeting seafood.

If the Humane Society wants to use gross trade value as a yardstick,
they are being completely dishonest by ignoring the 18% growth of
Newfoundland seafood in the U.S. market last year.

In 2006, total value of Newfoundland seafood exports to the U.S. was
CA $219 million. In 2007, the total value was CA $259 million, even
though U.S. currency continued to weaken.

To any objective observer, it is obvious that the boycott has no
impact on trade flows. But those who live by the sword also die by the
sword. If this is the yardstick HSUS chooses, it is obvious that their
attempted boycott is a miserable failure.

John Sackton, Editor And Publisher
Seafood.com News <http://www.seafood.com/> 1-781-861-1441 Email
comments to jsackton@seafood.com <mailto:jsackton@seafood.com>

Copyright 2008 Seafood.com <http://www.seafoodnews.com> and/or its
licensors. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of
Associated Press material is licensed.

NOTE: The video referred to below can be found on the PETA site;

http://www.the-canadians.com

Canadian Press Government of Newfoundland and Labrador slams PETA for seal video March 20, 2008 http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5jTaLC1iEwycwJxQGHuRTanYCzm5g


ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — The government of Newfoundland and Labrador is criticizing an anti-sealing video distributed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in Germany.


Fisheries Minister Tom Rideout says he is disappointed that the video draws a comparison between what the government says is "the violent physical abuse of a human" and the seal hunt. The European Union has been under growing pressure to adopt a ban on seal products.


Belgium and Holland have already approved legislation prohibiting the sale of seal products, and Germany, Italy and Austria are drafting similar legislation.


Those countries aren't the biggest importers of Canadian seal products, but they serve as a critical shipment and manufacturing point to the larger markets of Norway, Russia and China.


Rideout described the video as "a new low."


"We in Newfoundland and Labrador have become accustomed to the misinformation and inaccurate depictions of the seal harvest that are presented around this time every year," he said in a statement released on Friday.

"However, this particular attack is the most vile that I have ever seen myself in my almost 30 years in public life. It is completely indecent for this group of people, who have likely never even visited our province, to present such a disturbing depiction of sealers."


Depending on ice conditions, the hunt usually begins late this month or in early April.

Most of the hunt occurs in an area off the northeastern coast of Newfoundland called the Front.


Sealers and the federal Fisheries Department have defended the hunt as sustainable, humane, well-managed and a necessary source of income for fishermen on the East Coast.


But animal rights groups say the annual slaughter, which is the largest marine mammalian hunt in the world, is cruel, difficult to monitor, ravages stock levels and doesn't provide a lot of money for sealers.


Last year, the seal fishery generated $11.4 million in landed value in Newfoundland and Labrador, according to the provincial government.

PETA are just a bunch of lowlifes who cant do nuttin but sit on their butt all day and find things to argue bout. they try to save seals, they need to go to the rainforest and save a monkey. at least theyll talk to ya you can teach a monkey to smoke a cigar and ride a bicycle. more fun than a blubbery ol seal

Associated Press Canada's Annual Seal Hunt Starts Friday By ROB GILLIES – 17 hours ago

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gBdzPkwgv69Zn-13cRiOMOvfRbMwD8VKN22G2

TORONTO (AP) — Canada's annual seal hunt will start at the end of the week and hunters will be employing a more humane way of killing them,the government said Tuesday, but animal-rights activists condemned the planned killing as inhumane.


Phil Jenkins, a spokesman for the Department of Fisheries and
Oceans,said the hunt would begin Friday if weather permits.

Jenkins said new rules have been implemented to ensure that seals are dead before they are skinned. Hunters will be required to sever the arteries under a seal's flippers, he said.


"That is now a new condition of a sealing license," Jenkins said."We're just trying to make sure there is no possible way that a seal could be skinned while it was irreversibly unconscious but not dead.It's really going an extra distance to make sure that it's humane as it can be."


Animal rights groups said they still opposed the hunt.

"They've added bleeding to the killing process," said Rebecca Aldworth, director of Canadian wildlife issues for the Humane Society of the United States. "This won't change anything."


This year's total allowable catch has been set at 275,000 seals, up from 270,000 last year. The total allowable catch was 335,000 two years ago, but poor ice conditions led to the change last year.

Seventy percent of the seals will be killed in an area off Newfoundland's north coast known as the Front, while 30 percent will be taken in the Gulf of St. Lawrence — the first stage of the hunt.


"People around the world are shocked to know that Canada, which is perceived as one of the most progressive nations in the world, allows this outdated, archaic slaughter to continue," Aldworth said.


The United States has banned Canadian seal products since 1972. The Netherlands and Belgium also ban seal products. The European Union is considering a ban on all seal products, having outlawed the sale of the white pelts of baby seals in 1983.

Registered hunters in Canada are now not allowed to kill seal pups that haven't molted their downy white fur, typically when 10 to 21days old.

Animal rights groups say the seal hunt, the largest marine mammal hunt in the world, is cruel, difficult to monitor, ravages the seal population and doesn't provide a lot of money for sealers.


Sealers and the Fisheries Department defend the hunt as sustainable,humane and well-managed and say it provides supplemental income for isolated fishing communities that have been hurt by the decline in cod stocks.


Fishermen sell seal pelts mostly for the fashion industry in Norway,Russia and China, as well as blubber for oil, earning about $78 for each seal. The 2006 take of some 335,000 seals brought in about $25million.

The department estimated the total harp seal population to be 5.9million in 2004, the last time it conducted a survey. The government says there were about 1.8 million seals in the 1970s, and the population rebounded after Canada started managing the hunts.


On the Net:Fisheries and Oceans Canada:

http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.caHumane Society: http://www.humanesociety.orgInternational Fund for Animal Welfare: http://www.ifaw.org



THE ARA have no concern for the ecosystem here in Atlantic Canada where our fish stocks are being gobbled up by seals and their increasing numbers despite the last 30 years of culls. Every three years about 1 million seals are harvested. Imagine the problem we would have without those culls.

oh so if ya shoot a seal with a rifle in the head with a 30-06 it aint gonna die. okay never thought of that HSUS man you are getting me worked up lol

In the Netherlands 500,000 muskrats are killed every year to protect the dyke system. Those animals are then thrown away because ARA type laws have banned the sale of fur in the Netherlands. ARA is about killing animals to destroy the nuisance without using the animals for good purposes. They have a very warped sense of animal value as they value the ARA's own search for hate mongering people that get economic value from animals as the ARA throw animals into rotting garbage piles. Seals will face the same garbage heaps because of ARA lies.



CNN International
EU faces pressure to act on Canada seal hunt
Associated Press
March 26, 2008
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/03/26/eu.seal.hunt.ap/

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- The European Union is considering measures
against Canada to protest its annual seal hunt set to start this week
off its Atlantic coast, EU officials said Wednesday.

A harp seal pup lies on an ice floe this week in Canada's Gulf of St.
Lawrence. The seal hunt starts later this week.

EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas is "looking into the nature
of the inhumane killing of seals" and is drafting a text to be
presented before June, EU spokeswoman Barbara Helfferich told
reporters.

She would not say if the measures could include an import ban on
products derived from Canadian seals or other economic or political
sanctions.

Animal rights campaigners and lawmakers are putting increasing
pressure on the EU's executive office to take a tougher stand against
the annual hunt, which has been criticized as cruel.

Seal hunts also are carried out in Greenland, Norway, Russia, Namibia
and EU-member Finland, but none has been scrutinized by European
activists as much as Canada's -- which has frustrated Canadian
officials.

Animal rights groups often try to sway European opinion on the issue
by showing photographs or film footage of cute and cuddly seal pups,
and of dead and bloodied seals on ice flows.

British EU lawmaker Neil Parish appealed to the commission to impose a
ban on seal fur imports from Canada.

"As the culling season gets under way, the time has come for the
commission to take action," said Parish, who chairs a European
Parliament animal welfare panel.

"The slaughter of seals in Canada, including seals that are just a few
weeks old, is barbaric and the EU should not condone it. The methods
used, cudgeling with a 'hakapik' or shooting, have too often not
killed the seal outright, and I am not satisfied with Canadian
assertions that seals are not still being skinned alive."

The European Parliament last year called on the EU to impose a fur import ban.

However, this year's Canadian hunt will be conducted under new rules
meant to appease European concerns, with extra steps added to make
sure the animals are dead before they are skinned -- a recommendation
made in an EU report released in December. That report was
inconclusive on recommending a full EU ban.

Canadian authorities have set this year's total allowable catch at
275,000 seals, up from 270,000 last year. Seventy percent of the seals
will be taken in an area off Newfoundland's north coast known as the
Front, while 30 percent will be taken in the Gulf of St. Lawrence --
the first stage of the hunt.

The EU already has in place a 1983 ban on the import of white pelts
taken from baby seals, and a total ban could spell disaster for
Canadian hunters and aboriginal peoples.

Several EU nations, such as the Netherlands and Belgium, already have
their own bans on all seal products. The United States has banned
Canadian seal products since 1972.

Animal rights groups say Canada's seal hunt is difficult to monitor,
ravages the seal population and does not provide a lot of money for
sealers.

But sealers and the Canadian government have defended the hunt as
sustainable, humane, well-managed and a necessary source of income for
hunters. Many of them live in isolated fishing communities and deeply
rely on the seal hunt because their cod fishing died out years ago.

The slaughter of some 335,000 seals in 2006 brought about $25 million.

There are a lot of similarities in the way ARA groups attack both domestic and Wild animal use through campaigns that destroy better health for animals. Museling is a method of preventing sheep from becoming infected with a very destructive attack from fly strike. The seal herd is best protected from starvation and other related illness by culling but the ARA despise those methods which enhance the domesticated sheep health by preventing infection or wild seals health from starvation.


The Age (AUS)
Wool growers call Euro boycott a beat-up
March 27, 2008 - 1:20PM
http://news.theage.com.au/wool-growers-call-euro-boycott-a-beatup/20080327-21t9.html

The Australian sheep industry has labelled the latest European boycott
of Australian wool over mulesing concerns as "just another beat-up".

Matalan, a discount chain with about 200 stores across Britain, agreed
to the boycott after meeting with animal rights group People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

"We have instructed our suppliers they must not source Australian
merino wool for any future orders," Matalan spokesman David Mellett
said in an email to PETA.

But the Australian Sheep and Wool Industry Taskforce said on Thursday
the boycott was a joke because Matalan had never sourced wool from
Australia.

"This is just another PETA beat-up," the taskforce's secretariat
manager Norman Blackman told AAP.

"Obviously, any retailer coming out with a public statement like that
is not what we like to see.

"But this retailer has not been using Australian wool and, given the
nature of their product range, they are unlikely to do so in the
future."

About 50 European retailers, including Swedish giant H&M, along with
American chains Timberland and Abercrombie & Fitch, have agreed to
boycott Australian wool.

The retailers say they are concerned about the mulesing process, which
involves slicing off a patch of skin from the rear of sheep to prevent
fly-strike and maggot infestation.

Australian woolgrowers have agreed to phase out the practice by 2010,
but PETA says that's not soon enough.

The animal rights group also argues the anti-mulesing policy won't be mandatory.

But Mr Blackman insists the Australian industry is working towards
eliminating the practice altogether.

"By the end of 2010 we'll have all the tools in place so people won't
need to mules," he said.

The tools include alternatives such as a clip device which removes the
skin in a bloodless way and, longer term, breeding the wrinkled rear
areas out of sheep altogether.

Mr Blackman said whether or not the anti-mulesing policy was mandatory
would be up to governments.

But, he said, it was a moot point anyway as "the markets" would demand
wool from non-mulesed sheep after 2010.

Nevertheless, PETA plans to continue a series of protests outside
Australian embassies in Europe, including one in the Finnish capital
of Helsinki.

Others are planned for Copenhagen, Vienna and Berlin in coming weeks.

Mr Blackman said the embassy protests were simply stunts with "only a
few people there for an hour or so".

He said PETA's publicity campaign wasn't hurting the industry's bottom line.

"We're not seeing any impact at this stage at all," he said.

"We're getting positive feedback from (European retailers) about the
continued use of Australian wool."

(c) 2008 AAP

uugh! stupid hsus

Dang Mira...YOU ARE ON TOP OF IT!!!


Keep on sealin'!

Amazing idiots, I suppose having a sheep suffer for months and months as maggots eat away at its anus is more humane than snipping away a bit of skin that heals up in 2 weeks?

There is no way that the Canadian Coast Guard is guilty of ramming the Sea Shepherd intentionally but I have no doubt that Watson would ram them because he has made a career of doing such things. He will lie about doing such things to make himself look like a victim to the general public and brag about his actions to ARA supporters to make himself look like a hero warrior. Watson is a despicable man with the personal integrity of a weasel.


The Canadian Press
Tension mounts on East Coast over seal hunt
Mon. Mar. 31 2008
http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5hiuva2MROMcav7JFClhIO0oKo8Xw

HALIFAX -- A coast guard icebreaker and a ship owned by a militant
conservation group have collided in the Gulf of St. Lawrence as
tension mounts over the annual seal hunt off Canada's East Coast.

A coast guard icebreaker and a ship owned by a militant conservation
group have collided in the Gulf of St. Lawrence as tension mounts over
the annual seal hunt off Canada's East Coast.

A spokesman for the federal Fisheries Department says the icebreaker
was "grazed'' twice by the Farley Mowat, owned by the Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society.

But the conservation group says its ship was rammed twice Sunday by
the icebreaker Des Groseilliers.

Department spokesman Phil Jenkins called the allegation that the
Farley Mowat was rammed "absolutely false.''

The crew aboard the Farley Mowat say they were told by the coast guard
not to approach the area where seals were being slaughtered on the
third day of the hunt.

The conservation group says the coast guard ship rammed its vessel
twice when the Farley Mowat did not comply.