AR-News: (CA) Letters send to editor of Globe & Mail: Seal Hunt - Selective compassion?

[Barry Kent MacKay]

Selective compassion?

By S.K. WOOD
Wednesday, April 7, 2004 - Page A18

Toronto -- Re Seal Hunt Is On, Just As It Should Be (April 6): I do not 
believe that compassion is an emotion to be turned on and off like a faucet.

Those who deplore the slaughter of seals will also feel compassion for the 
suffering of any creature, terrified and helpless in the hands of man.

It is only because the public does not see the cruelty of the 
slaughterhouse, the trap-line or the research laboratory that an outcry 
against them, equal to that against the seal hunt, is never heard.

The seal hunt is a sop thrown to Newfoundland by politicians who, after many

years, are still unable to find a viable solution to unemployment in the 
province. While the seal hunt may pacify Newfoundland, it does inestimable 
damage to Canada's prestige and credibility worldwide.

We do not need The New York Times to shove us off our pedestal. The seal 
hunt alone has done that.
___________________________

by ALFRED DOBELL
Wednesday, April 7, 2004 - Page A18

Oakville, Ont. -- The suggestion that harp seals are responsible for the 
fact that "cod stocks have withered to nothing" shows a lack of knowledge of

the underwater carnage inflicted by modern human technology on the cod 
population.

Go and visit a one of those factory ships that abound in the waters of the 
Grand Banks and then contemplate who is talking "codswallop."

_________________________________________________________________

Barry Kent MacKay
Canadian Representative
ANIMAL PROTECTION INSTITUTE 
www.api4animals.org