Penalize with fines and jail the killings, exploitation and consumption of seals

Canada celebrates 150 years, allowing the hunting of seal pups in the most brutal and imaginable way.

On July 1, Canada was 150 years old. The country celebrated it worldwide in the most Canadian way possible: illustrating the hallucinatory of its geography, showing the revitalized spirit of integration promoted by Justin Trudeau and showing its high standards of life, its high degree of tolerance and its history and friendly image.

All these things are true, as are all these others, which are much darker and which we tend to ignore. But there is a story in Canada that impacts and surprises every year, and that also has been part of the idiosyncrasy of the country century and a half: the hunting of young seals in the most brutal way imaginable.

The hunting season goes back to the end of winter and the beginning of spring, when the young reach a certain maturity but not enough to make their skin too hard for outerwear. However, a video-complaint by PETA published on its Latin channel a few days ago has broken down virally, accumulating millions of visits. That is why I initiate this petition, so that for its birthday, Canada prohibits the practice.

The initiative aims to culminate the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the country's independence (although not complete, that would not reach the presidency of Trudeau's father in the sixties) with a birthday gift to humanity: stop the grotesque. Because regardless of the moral consideration of hunting, is a grotesque: men pounding the head of seals and letting them bleed.

The truth is that the history of seal hunting goes back as far as the history of Canada. There are records of the phenomenon, institutionalized and organized, as early as the eighteenth century, long before the United States even became independent. With time and before the rapid decline of their populations, the government of Canada established quotas, which now amount to some 60,000 (!) Dams every year.

The greater restrictions and the international pressure have reduced the intensity of the fighters (and, obvious, the necessity to recover a population that in its peaks lost more than 200,000 units to the year by the hunting), allowing that in places like New England (States United) the animals recover with great intensity.

It is worth noting that Canada is not the only country that hunts seals on a large scale, although their numbers and the cruelty of their methods have little comparison. Russia, Norway and Greenland do the same, and they even have open disputes for Canada over the colonies. Other more unexpected countries, such as Namibia, also hunt the young (in Canada they can be hunted legally from 14 days of age) and, formerly, to the southern cone.

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