Counting the days...
I'm now counting the days until I set off for Canada. In 5 days time I'll be cooped up in a plane on the way to Montreal. I've now also acquired a new travelling companion. Bont voor Dieren has invited Socialist Party MP Krista van Velzen to join the expedition. She's a real activist at heart and has a track record of standing up for the rights of seals and other fur-bearing animals. Last Tuesday she showed up at our demo in the Hague with a delegation from the SP. Tomorrow she is due to table a resolution in the Dutch parliament for a national import ban on seal products. Needless to say, I'm curious whether it will bear any fruit.
During the past few days reports of demos that have been held elsewhere in the world have been flooding in to our officies. Protests against the seal hunt took place from Bogota to Zagreb. We've also been getting a huge number of clippings from national and regional newspapers, which ran stories and photos of our own demo. It's great that there is so much media attention being devoted to the fate of the poor seals.
The sealing issue really gets to a lot of people. I've been fielding phone calls from highly emotional people who feel so powerless because they know than in the space of a few days thousands of seals will meet a bloody end. People want to know whether we can spray the seals with paint to render their fur worthless to the fur industry, which we unfortunately cannot do due to the strict marine mammal regulations. I also had one hysterical woman on the line asking why if the seals 'had to die anyway' couldn't we get the sealers to euthanise them instead of clubbing them to death. She also asked whether there was something that could be put in the seal's food to stop them having babies to save them from such a fate. I'm not quite sure what planet she was living on; a good heart, but completely out of touch with reality!
As I listened to her sob her heart out for 15 minutes, I began to wonder just who was actually going out the the ice floes to witness the hunt for real! :-) Of course, when I get out to the ice, I'm also going to stand there feeling completely powerless. I know that I won't be able to be able to do anything for those seal, but will be able to help create a better and safer future for their species in the future. As a professional animal rights campaigner, I am part of an important social movement that will in the near future ensure that this barbarity will disappear off the face of the planet for once and for all.
During the past few days reports of demos that have been held elsewhere in the world have been flooding in to our officies. Protests against the seal hunt took place from Bogota to Zagreb. We've also been getting a huge number of clippings from national and regional newspapers, which ran stories and photos of our own demo. It's great that there is so much media attention being devoted to the fate of the poor seals.
The sealing issue really gets to a lot of people. I've been fielding phone calls from highly emotional people who feel so powerless because they know than in the space of a few days thousands of seals will meet a bloody end. People want to know whether we can spray the seals with paint to render their fur worthless to the fur industry, which we unfortunately cannot do due to the strict marine mammal regulations. I also had one hysterical woman on the line asking why if the seals 'had to die anyway' couldn't we get the sealers to euthanise them instead of clubbing them to death. She also asked whether there was something that could be put in the seal's food to stop them having babies to save them from such a fate. I'm not quite sure what planet she was living on; a good heart, but completely out of touch with reality!
As I listened to her sob her heart out for 15 minutes, I began to wonder just who was actually going out the the ice floes to witness the hunt for real! :-) Of course, when I get out to the ice, I'm also going to stand there feeling completely powerless. I know that I won't be able to be able to do anything for those seal, but will be able to help create a better and safer future for their species in the future. As a professional animal rights campaigner, I am part of an important social movement that will in the near future ensure that this barbarity will disappear off the face of the planet for once and for all.
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