Ever since French actress Brigitte Bardot first cradled a whitecoat pup in 1977, Canada’s seal hunt has been struggling for survival. Animal rights activists successfully turned public opinion against the hunt – and governments bowed under pressure. The European Union implemented a ban on most seal products in 2009, and just this week removed an exemption for seal products harvested for reasons of “sustainable management of marine resources.” And just last year, dispute over sealing famously threatened to derail the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement.
Nevertheless, the sealing industry soldiers on. Between 2005 and 2014, Canada exported over $66.5 million worth of seal products to more than 48 countries. For many sealers, the hunt is crucial, providing up to a third of their total income. And science is showing that seals are far from the benign, cuddly creatures adorning animal rights posters. From Newfoundland to Scotland, they are consuming cod stocks at an alarming rate, compromising the EU’s cod recovery plan as well as the return of Canada’s cod stocks.
And now, the Fur Institute of Canada wants to pump up its bottom line, by filling a global market for seal penises. In a report submitted to the federal Fisheries Department, the Council proposes a five-year plan to harvest 140,000 seals, or 70% of the current population. And key to that cull is using the whole animal, including its sexual organs. According to the report, “The penises of juvenile and adult animals may be dried and sold as sexual enhancement products, particularly to Asian buyers … Asian consumers, particularly athletes, also consume a beverage called Dalishen Oral Liquid that is made from seal penis and testicles, which they believe to be energizing and performance enhancing.”
Whether one is revolted or bemused by this appetite for seal genitals, using the whole animal is generally recognized as the most respectful method of consumption. Among indigenous and subsistence populations, it’s simply common sense. So despite the objections of the squeamish, it is hard to object to expanding the seal trade to include penises.
Unfortunately, there is one wrinkle in the Fur Institute’s argument, and that is the cost of their plan to Canadian taxpayers. According to their report, harvesting the grey seals would cost roughly $9 million. That assumes sales of 70,000 carcasses for $4 million in the first year — and to guarantee that, the plan calls for the creation of a $5 million “market access fund,” underwritten by the federal government as well as those of the Atlantic provinces and Quebec, to open markets in ethnic minority neighbourhoods in Canada as well as abroad.
Direct subsidies to the seal industry ceased in 2001, though animal welfare groups claim that support for processing plants and coast guard services amount to continued indirect government support. One could make the same argument about other Canadian agricultural products, but that is not a reason to spend more public money on yet another bureaucracy. When it comes to expanding the market for seal products, selling penises should be no different than selling pelts. Let’s keep taxpayers off the hakapik.
National Post