Love them or hate them, the members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) are masters of controversial campaigns.
PETA, has had its sights on the Atlantic Canada seal hunt for years, enlisting prominent figures such as former-Beatle Sir Paul McCartney, actress Pamela Anderson and talk-show host Ellen Degeneres to voice their opposition.
But it’s not the star-power that PETA gets the most attention for; it’s the graphic, in-your-face campaigns featuring bloody carcasses of slaughtered farm animals, whales and – in Atlantic Canada’s case – seals.
The Canadian government has struggled to keep the global market for seal pelts open, but year-after-year demand decreases and prices have plummeted – Good news for animal rights activists, bad news for Sealers and their families.
As a result Canada has begun looking to China for seal product exports, while European countries begin closing their doors to seal furs, oils and meat.
In 2011, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans raised the quota of its annual seal cull to 468,200 animals, up from 388,200 the year before.
To drive its point home this season, PETA has gone interactive and created a video game, to go along with an online petition and its facts and myths page about the hunt.
In the Save Sammy Maze, players navigate an animated seal through increasingly narrow maze of ice. If Sammy the Seal hits an ice floe an image of a bloodied, skinned seal carcass flashes on the computer screen. (See related links)
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The shock value resonates among both the pro- and anti-seal hunting crowds, but what do you think about PETA’s end the seal hunt campaign? Take our poll.
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