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Details
The ControversyI'm sure everyone and there mother has seen those photos of the seals being brutally slaughtered up north but how many of the photos actually account for what is happing up north. the seal controversy has struck me as a topic that doesn't make a whole lot of sense because its just hunting, humans have done it for millions of years and lots of people hunt all around the world. so why the outrage?
Some of the biggest organizations that are trying to stop seal hunting are peta, ifaw, and Sea Shepherd. the issue that these companies are having appears to be with commercial seal hunting which makes up about 97% of the seals being killed, but regardless less than 100000 seals are killed each year which is just a fraction compared to other species such as cows (at 2 million deaths / year), pigs (at 20 million deaths/ year) or chickens (at 550 million deaths/ year ), so why isn't there bigger campaigns for those animals? you would think that it might be because they are an endangered species but that's not the case, according to the government of Canada there are over 7.4 million harp seals globally and the population is still getting bigger which begs the question why are so many groups trying to stop seal hunting in the north especially because seal hunting is such an important part of indigenous culture. not to mention that there is a giant issue with the seals eating all of the cod, with the rising seal population the cod population is depleting, there are multiple reasons for this such as over-fishing, but a big one is the seal population wiping them out. Problems up northSeal hunting has always been apart of indigenous culture up north but that's not just why its important to them, the food prices in grocery /convenient stores is extremely expensive, for example a bottle of ketchup in B.C. is roughly 3.50$ where as in Nunavut its roughly 13.60$. with such high food prices most family's up north are unable to afford to buy groceries. because of this most family's are starving, so hunting is pretty much the only way most family's are able to survive. "The Grizzly's" directed by Miranda de Pencier is about a lacrosse team up in Kugluktuk, Nunavut. the movie gives a very good incite into why hunting is so important in community's. if the big organizations (peta, ifaw, and Sea Shepherd) end up stopping the commercial aspect of seal hunting it would be devastating as most of the commercial workers are indigenous so it would put a crazy amount of people with out jobs, This would cause the struggling communities to struggle even more.
the solutionI think that the next best step would be to educate people on why seal hunting is so important, as Arnaquq-Baril director of "angry Inuk" said "Few people outside of the Arctic realize how crucial seals are to the Inuit economy and way of life. But education is key, I think people are interested in opening their eyes to the bigger picture. We want to tell where the seal comes from, who caught it, who prepared the skin, where the meat went.” as more people start to realize how important seal hunting is, the more people will stop supporting big organizations like peta who are trying to take away that part of their culture.
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