Information About the Slaughter of Baby Seals
On the day IFAW was founded in 1969 to end Canada’s commercial seal hunt, the harp seal population was on the road to extinction. Since then, the campaign to save the seals has become an icon of the animal welfare movement.
 IFAW’s most significant achievement has been the securing the European ban on the import of whitecoat harp and blueback hooded seal pelt products. This single success eliminated the primary market for seal fur and saved well over a million seals.
By continuing the campaign long after many other groups gave up the fight, IFAW has blocked repeated attempts to renew the hunt for whitecoats and bluebacks, helped thwart repeated efforts to weaken the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act, and continues to recapture the public attention about the need to protect these animals, and others, from inhumane commercial exploitation.
But thanks to government subsidies and increased harp seal quotas over the past ten years, the seal hunt is back and worse than ever. The animal cruelty to seal pups as young as two weeks old, whether beaten or shot, is both unnecessary and wasteful. As we do every year, IFAW hunt observer will gather the information we need to continue educating politicians and the public about the many scientific, economic and moral reasons to end the commercial seal hunt in Canada once and for all.
As we again face a renewed hunt, as well as additional threats to the seal population from global warming, there is new hope. Hope such as the recent ban in Belgium on the import of all seal products and the additional momentum behind similar bans in other European countries. But hope most of all, from supporters like you who continue to voice your outrage and gather others to stand with you in telling the rest of the world what is really going on off the East Coast of Canada.
To learn more about why the commercial seal hunt is cruel and unnecessary, please click on the links below.
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IFAW has led the fight to stop the cruel slaughter of seal pups
since the 1960s, resulting in the import ban of newborn whitecoat
seal pelts in 1983. Today, with offices in 16 countries, IFAW is the
world's leading animal welfare
organization, fighting to save seals both on the ice and through vital
scientific and market research.
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