Brigitte Bardot reacts while watching footage from previous seal hunts during a news conference in Ottawa March 22, 2006. REUTERS/Chris Wattie

Tearful Bardot begs Canada to scrap seal hunt

Wed Mar 22, 2006 9:55 PM GMT
Reuters UK

By David Ljunggren

OTTAWA (Reuters) - French film star turned animal rights campaigner Brigitte Bardot tearfully begged Canada on Wednesday to stop the annual harp seal hunt, during which about 325,000 young seal pups will be shot or beaten to death.

"Before I die I want to see this massacre ended," she told a news conference, sitting in front of a poster that showed a giant seal clubbing a blood-covered human baby.

The hunt, which takes place on ice floes off the coast of eastern Canada, is due to start on Friday or Saturday. Ottawa denies the hunt is cruel and says it helps the local economy while keeping the seal population healthy and in check.

To try to stop the hunt each year, activists release gory pictures of hunters crushing seal skulls with big clubs. Anti-hunt campaigners are calling on some major U.S. restaurant chains to boycott Canadian seafood until the hunt stops.

Bardot, who started campaigning against the hunt some 30 years ago, cried quietly as aides played a video showing graphic shots of young seals screaming in agony and drowning in their own blood after being attacked by hunters.

"Canada is a rich country. It doesn't need to sell skin, oil, fat and powdered seal penises to make aphrodisiacs for countries in Asia ... you cannot continue a genocide of animals like this," said the 71-year-old actress, who peppered her comments with expletives.

Harp seals can be legally hunted once they shed their white coats at about two weeks, though they are not usually hunted until at least a week later.

Canada says the seal population is almost six million, nearly triple the level of the 1970s.

"For outsiders to come and tell sealers that they don't need to participate in an activity that feeds their families shows a deep misunderstanding of the issues," said Phil Jenkins, a spokesman for Canada's federal fisheries ministry.

Earlier this month, former Beatle Paul McCartney and his wife ventured out on to an ice floe and posed with young seals to try to persuade Prime Minister Stephen Harper to scrap the hunt.

Harper turned down a request to meet Bardot, who wrote him an open letter in which she said "Only imbeciles don't change their minds."

Officials and sealers say the ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence is so poor this year that hunters will not be able to kill many seals with clubs and will have to shoot them instead.

"We are kind of worried because the ice is not too good and they are drifting outside the Gulf," said seal hunter Jean-Claude LaPierre.

"We flew over it in a helicopter and there are quite a few seals that went out on the Atlantic," he told Reuters Television in Prince Edward Island.

(With additional reporting by Deborah Gembara in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island)

Screen icon Bardot urges Canada to end seal hunt
CTV.ca News Staff- 3/24/06

Legendary silver screen starlet Brigitte Bardot appealed to Canadians to put an end to the decades-old east Coast seal hunt, calling it a "massacre." "I might not ever come here again. So I ask you with my heart and soul ... I want to see this massacre stop," said a tearful Bardot. "I would like that my life would have served at least for that."

Bardot, who founded the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the Welfare and Protection of Animals, first protested the seal hunt in the 1970s when she posed for photographs with seal pups. Bardot requested an audience with the prime minister to discuss the issue, but was turned down.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper appeared unconcerned when Watson warned him to expect harsh criticism from Bardot. "My responsibilities are about the ... needs of Canadians," Harper said. "I don't intend to participate in the actions of famous people for publicity." Federal Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn also refused a request to meet with Bardot, saying that to do so "just furthers their cause."

Senator Celine Hervieux-Payette was quick to come to the defence of seal hunters. "What is insulting is we are being told this by someone from a foreign country that we have criminals -- when we know these people are hunters who are honestly earning their livelihood," she said in French. Earlier, the Liberal senator accused Bardot of being deceitful in her campaign to end the hunt. She said Bardot is promoting her cause dishonestly by using a graphic image of a slaughtered seal with its blood splashed across the snow. The image is posted on Bardot's website. The senator pointed out that whitecoat seal pups, such as the one in the picture, have been protected by federal law since 1987. However, their fur darkens at about age two weeks, at which point they can be legally hunted.

Other celebrities:
Bardot is the second high-profile celebrity to visit Canada this month to protest the seal hunt. Former Beatle Paul McCartney and his wife, Heather Mills McCartney, protested the hunt earlier this month. They led an army of media and animal rights activists onto an ice floe in the Gulf of St. Lawrence where they posed with whitecoat harp seal pups.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans claims Canada's seal hunt population is at its healthiest level in years. A week ago, Ottawa raised this year's seal hunt limit to 325,000, up 5,000 from last year. The seal population's size is estimated to be at least five million -- and roughly three times higher than seal populations in the 1970s.

The date for the hunt's start is expected to be announced this week.

Boycott:
The Humane Society of the United States says its year-long campaign to boycott Canadian seafood over the hunt is having a significant effect. On Wednesday, the organization released a list of more than 50 American restaurants and companies that have joined the boycott.

"The Canadian government and the fishing industry need to decide whether maintaining a seal hunt is worth the cost," Humane Society spokesperson Pat Ragan told The Canadian Press.

However, a Washington restaurant industry lobby group called the Center for Consumer Freedom said two-thirds of those restaurants were not aware they were on the humane society's list. The group says Statistics Canada figures show Canadian snow crab exports to the U.S. have dropped by more than $150 million, or 36 per cent since, the campaign began last year.

However, Canadian fisheries officials said other factors unrelated to the boycott are causing losses for the snow crab industry, including a strike, a soft-shell crab infestation, and the effects of Hurricane Katrina.

"Their claims are just false," said Phil Jenkins, a spokesman for Fisheries and Oceans Canada. "The industry is reporting that this boycott has had no effect on their operations at all," Jenkins said.

"It's an attempt by (the Human Society in the United States) to hitch their wagon to a declining value of this commodity, and then take credit for it."

With a report from CTV's Rosemary Thompson and files from The Canadian Press