ARAN's Rally Against Canada's Seal Slaughter - Report
dublin |
animal rights |
news report 
Friday March 24, 2006 13:24
by John Carmody - Animal Rights Action Network (ARAN)
arancampaigns at eircom dot net
ARAN Po Box 722 Kildare, Ireland
087-6275579
People Speak Out Against Animal Cruelty
Today’s demonstration against the Canadian seal hunt went great, better than expected! We had a wonderful turn out, people just kept coming and going from 12noon til 2pm today Thursday March 23rd 2006! Volunteers from ARAN came from Limerick, Galway, Sligo, Meath and joined with our friends in Dublin! Many other caring people could not make it due to work commitments but called, written and emailed the Canadian embassy on the day, we also had a wonderful member of the Canadian public at this demo too and she now speaks out against this hunt and much more on animal cruelty.
This demo is now in its fourth year that ARAN has organized outside the Canadian embassy and up until now we like so many others have being calling on Canadian government to end the seal slaughter, but it looks like after 40 years this is not happening! So today’s demonstration we focused directly on highlighting the boycott of Canadian seafood, we had fabulous placards reading “DON”T BUY CANADIAN SEA FOOD” and we chanted this also along with a really noisy megaphone.
To top things off media attention was great too. Prior to doing the demo we done several radio interviews on many Dublin FM radio stations and today we done interviews on many more including International Network News which sells stories to other radio stations. We were also lucky enough to have reporters from Independent News, Press Association Ireland which sells to major media outlets, Southside people, Northside People and East people newspapers and other freelance reporters! During the radio interviews and interviews with reporters from the newspapers we continued to promote the boycott of Canadian seafood and stressed that ARAN has now identified that Ireland imports about $170,000 worth of Canadian seafood and that we are working on highlighting the restaurants that sell this and encourage the restaurants that sell the seafood to stop. We also spoke about the huge boycott in the USA and the UK right now and urged members of the public to come out and speak out against the slaughter and to stop animal cruelty. Maybe this will be the only chance we have of ending this brutal massacre of defenseless marine wildlife.
Thanks to everyone who turned up, you made this demonstration happen and you’re making a huge difference!
Comments (3 of 3)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3It was a great day alright, good turnout, and the megaphone was a big help it seemed! People were generally supportive too, aside from the obligatory gobshite minority.
It still amazes me that so many people in various nations choose to take to the streets to protest an annual cull when they only have one side of the story.
Have these people considered that these seals, of which there are huge numbers, are being harvested in order to support entire villages? Innuit have been hunting seal for hundreds of years as a staple of their diet. I don't hear about anybody protesting about that.
The east coast hunt has been going on for over 100 years off the coast of Newfoundland and sees no sign of stopping in the near future. The villages see the seals as a resource that they will continue to make use of, much like farmers use cows, sheep, and pigs and hunters use various birds, deer etc.
In my opinion, I don't think that the world would be getting its shorts in a knot if it wasn't for the video tapes of the actual hunt taking place. Sure, it's not a pretty sight to see a creature getting smacked on the head,but have any of the protestors ever considered how their chicken wings got to the table? Believe me that is a much more gruesome sight to see. If all those protestors had any real mercy they would all become vegetarians overnight and stick to gnawing on carrots instead of t-bone steaks and veal cutlets.
Protest if you will, but get all your facts and try to see the story from the other side of the fence.
and it amazes me to see poor animals die for our comfort yes we eat chicken but they kill seals for sport not resources!!!!
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