Actor Alison Steadman visits seal pup nursery & says Stop the Seal Hunt
3 March 2008
Alison Steadman visited a seal pup nursery on the ice floes off Canada's east coast today (Monday 3 March) and called for an end to the largest marine mammal hunt in the world, due to start here, likely killing the very seal pups she saw, later this month.
Alison Steadman at the seal pup nursery, March 2008
Acclaimed for roles on screen and stage, including “Abigail's Party”, “Life is Sweet” and “Confetti”, Alison Steadman joined Respect for Animals and Humane Society International to see hundreds of the newly born seal pups being nursed by their mothers across a vast expanse of ice off Prince Edward Island in the Gulf of St Lawrence, Newfoundland.
Watching the mothers and pups, Alison Steadman said: "It is heart wrenching to know that in just a few weeks time, sealers will be standing here on the ice, bludgeoning the defenceless seal pups to death, and skinning them, just so their pelts can be turned in to some frivolous trinket or coat trim. It is inexcusable."
She continued: "It is tragic that Canada's pristine ice floes are now remembered as the place where millions of seal pups are bludgeoned to death, where the largest most brutal marine mammal hunt in the world continues to take place every year."
Seal pup, March 2008
Over the last few years the Canadian government-issued seal catch quotas have amounted to over one million animals, the vast majority of those killed would have been less than three months of age.
Mark Glover, Director, Respect for Animals and HSI (UK), said: "I have witnessed the hunt for the last four years and have seen the most horrendous sights, seals being bludgeoned, stuck and dragged with hooks then skinned. Although the European Parliament has voted overwhelmingly for a ban on this trade and the European Commission is currently looking closely at the issue there is still no ban on the import of seal products into the UK and until there is we all have the blood of the seals on our hands."