“Until he extends the circle of compassion

To all living things,

Man will never find peace.”

Dr. Albert Schweitzer

It seems that many of us report

This March Madness every year

When will humanity wake up

When will we finally shed a tear

When will we all finally realize

That cruelty to our earthly neighbors

Is not something to be proud of

Or something we should savor

How many of earth’s innocent creatures

Must suffer because of our insatiable greed

And just how long in bloody hell will it take

Before we once again adhere to God’s Creed

The Canadian government vehemently denies charges that their annual March seal hunts target seal pups; but their own figures show that over 96% of the 300,000 seals killed during last year's hunt were between 12 days and 12 weeks old.

This is the only major hunt, anywhere in the world, that targets such young animals.

And baby seal hunting isn’t much of a challenge – it’s more like harvesting immobile vegetables. Young seal pups sprawl on the ice completely helpless before they are violently cut down – never having a chance to escape.

These infants often lift their heads and try to cry out in anguish, but they can manage only a pathetic whimper or two before the seal hunter’s club viciously smashes into their tiny skulls.

And many of these clubbed baby seals will then be atrociously skinned alive. Their front flippers flailing violently, desperately trying to squirm away as the cruel cutting knife finds them, pawing blindly and wrenching hysterically, until they finally die.

This annual March mass of baby seal hunters pours over the ice fields in their vast army of boats, snowmobiles, and helicopters, leaving grotesque trails of thick crimson seal blood everywhere in their bloody wake.

After these seals are skinned, and their pelts and blubber are removed, their carcasses are callously abandoned on the ice, left in bloody piles like so much disposed garbage in a dumpster.

The seal meat is never even harvested.

And just as many seals are killed today as during the 1950s and 60s, when over hunting significantly pushed seals down the road towards extinction.

These seals are now rapidly running out of road.

Both the Canadian government and the sealing industry continue to believe that no one cares about the innocent young blood being spilled each and every year across the Gulf of St. Lawrence.  And they obviously count on our apathy.

And very sadly, they are obviously right.

Seal hunting is an off-season activity conducted by fishermen from Canada's East Coast. They earn a small fraction of their income from sealing, and the rest from commercial fisheries. Canadian seafood exports to the United States contribute $3 billion annually to the Canadian economy--dwarfing the few million dollars provided by this seal harvest.

The connection between the commercial fishing industry and the seal hunt in Canada gives consumers all over the world the power to end this cruel and barbaric slaughter if we choose to do so by boycotting Canadian seafood products, until these seal hunts are finally stopped.

The Humane Society link below provides a petition that you can sign to protest this grotesque slaughter to the Canadian government.

When I force myself to look at these gruesome bloody seal pictures, I can imagine the utter sadness and revulsion that Native Americans must have felt when they came upon gigantic fields riddled with the bloody corpses of thousands of bison, who were also slaughtered in mass for their pelts, and whose flesh was also left to rot out on the Western prairies.

And I truly wonder how God feels when he gazes down upon the bloody corpses of these tiny innocent babies on these killing fields of ice, and He sees what we so cold heartedly continue to do with so many of  the gifts He has bestowed upon us.

It’s time for everyone to rise up – to finally demand an end to this bloody March Madness – before it’s too late to save either these seals or our souls.