RESTAURANTS VOW TO HELP STOP CANADA’S COMMERCIAL SEAL HUNT

February 28, 2007 -- Coast to coast, all across the United States and Canada, restaurants, chefs and seafood companies are tackling Canada’s commercial seal hunt head on by not purchasing Canadian seafood.

The campaign began in March 2005 and is being spearheaded by The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and Animal Alliance of Canada. Over 2500 chefs and seafood buyers have pledged either a partial or complete boycott of Canadian seafood until the seal hunt ends. More are joining every day.  

From Portland’s Pearl District to Miami’s golden coast of renowned restaurants and celebrity chefs, seafood buyers are saying no to a fishing industry that kills over 300,000 baby seals for their fur every year and endangers the ecological environment in the North and Northwest Atlantic by dumping hundreds of thousands of pounds of rotting seal flesh into the ocean.  

Rocco DiSpirito, celebrated author and TV’s star chef, is just one of the many celebrity chefs who has chosen not to purchase Canadian seafood.   He is joined by twice nominated James Beard Foundation Best New Chef, Suzanne Goin, as well as such other culinary notables as Nancy Oakes, Seth Wood, and the visionary team of Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger .   In fact, the list of restaurants and executive chefs who have joined the boycott reads like a Who’s Who of the restaurant industry.   

A.O.C. and Lucques (Suzanne Goin), Aquitaine Bar á Vin Bistrot and Aquitaine Bis (Seth Wood); Artisanal Fromagerie & Bistro (Terrance Brennan); Bonfire (a Todd English Restaurant); Border Grill and Ciudad (Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger); Boulevard Restaurant (Nancy Oakes); Ca’ Brea Restaurant (Antonio Tommasi); Caprial’s Bistro (Mark Dowers); Dan’l Wesbster Inn; Delmonico’s Lobster House Restaurants; Ecofish; the Miami Beach gem, Escopazzo (Giancarla Bodoni); Geoffrey’s Malibu (Bijan Shakatfard); Ginger Grove; Harry Denton’s Starlight Room;   Hayes Street Grill (Patricia Unterman); Hemenway’s Seafood Grill & Oyster Bar (Jeremy Houston); Il Piatto (Eugen Bingham); Kuleto’s (Sharyl Seim); La Folie and Left Bank (Roland Passot); Legal Sea Foods Restaurants and Fish Markets; the famous Jay Leno hangout, Market Bar-B-Que (Michael Hammond);   N9NE Steak House (Barry Dakake); the Palme d’ Or at the Biltmore (Philippe Ruiz); Papa Haydn East (B.J. Smith); Postrio’s (Mitchell and Steven Rosenthal); Stephanie’s on Newbury (Corey Comeau); and Wildwood (Corey Schreiber).  

“But we don’t serve seals…”

At first it may not be clear to chefs what Canada’s commercial seal hunt has to do with the decisions of these top U.S. restaurants to not serve Canadian seafood.  

“When I first speak with an executive chef, they usually tell me right off that they don’t serve seal,” says Fia Perera, coordinator of The HSUS Restaurant for Seals Campaign.

“They ask why we are asking them not to purchase Canadian seafood.

 “But when I tell them how interconnected Canada’s sealing and fishing industries are, that Canadian fishermen are the ones who kill seals, that the Canadian Fisheries Ministry is using the seal as a scapegoats to cover up their inability to manage the fisheries, and that restaurants need well-managed fisheries if they want to continue selling seafood, they begin to understand,” says Perera.  

But some chefs do worry about how Canadians feel about the seal hunt and if joining the boycott will hurt their business. To answer just such a question, Environics, the Canadian polling firm, polled about the seal hunt. It was no surprise when 69% of the respondents said they oppose the commercial seal hunt and only 4% said they would be very upset if the seal hunt ended.   Even in Atlantic Canada, opponents to the hunt abound.

When Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville Café restaurants signed on to the boycott of Canadian seafood, he was inundated with messages of appreciation and many, like the one below, came from Canadians closest to the seal hunt.”  

“ As a person who lives in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia...a fishing village on the East Coast of Canada...I want to say BRAVO! I am SO proud of you taking this action! A lot of us who live here fully understand the truth and cruelty behind this seal "hunt" and are TOTALLY against it. It has NO merit and is blatant, vicious abuse of these mammals. WE have caused the collapse of the fishery due to our greed! We all know this to be true but some would still use another species on which to pin the responsibility. The destruction of the habitat goes on unchecked and this "cull" is nothing more than a cover-up & weak attempt to appease the few who pull the political strings. The seal killing is no way to help those in the fishery and everyone is aware of that truth. So thank you again!!! I have been to your restaurants and will most certainly be back!”   (Reprinted from the original)

In the United States, opposition to the seal hunt is even stronger.   Seventy-nine per cent of Americans oppose the seal hunt with, interestingly, the largest opposition coming from the nation’s farming states.   Unlike farm animals, seals are not killed for food but for unnecessary items such as fur trim and trinkets.  

“It was a no-brainer,” says Anne Cuggino of her decision to stop purchasing Canadian seafood until the seal hunt ends for good. “When I learned how it is done, how unnecessary and barbaric it is, and how it is done by fishermen in their off time, I decided this was something we had to do.”   As the executive chef of the Veritable Quandary, Cuggino was one of the first chefs from Portland, Oregon to sign on to the campaign.    

Another star Portland chef, Patanegra’s Bernard Malherbe will no longer be serving seafood from the sealing provinces.   “When I saw the photos of the carcasses [of the baby seals] left on the ice, it stuck with me.   It is a genocide.   We forget that we are animals, too.”

Malherbe isn’t just concerned about the seal pups, however.   He is also concerned about Canada’s mismanagement of the fisheries and what effect the seal hunt has on the North Atlantic commercial fish species.

”I believe in responsible fishing. Every fishing community should know that you have to fish sustainably. The Canadian governments should be more responsible. They’ve got   international fishing, they have to be responsible to an international community,” Malherbe says.

The more they kill, the better I will love it!

The hunt has its fan base.   One of its chief cheerleaders is John Efford, former Newfoundland Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture.   A few years ago, Efford stood up in front of Canada’s House of Assembly and declared:   “I would like to see the 6 million seals, or whatever number is out there, killed and sold, or destroyed or burned.   I do not care what happens to them…the more they kill the better I will love it.”  

Sadly, others in the Government of Canada – chiefly those in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans – share Efford’s commitment to the continuation of the seal hunt. The Government of Canada subsidizes and supports the seal slaughter, in part because most major federal political parties are trying to gain support in Eastern Canada.    With the seal hunt accounting for well under 1% of the region’s GDP, it’s time for Ottawa to abandon its misplaced belief that the region is dependent on this cruel and outdated hunt.

Two fish, one fish…no fish

Canada has the world’s largest coastline.   Its fishing industry has supplied the world with a seemingly endless supply of cod, tuna, halibut, haddock, flounder, shrimp, lobster, mussels and snow crab.   That is until recently.  

Within the last 20 years, fishermen have noticed a change that is causing alarm from Victoria, British Columbia to Gander, Newfoundland.   The wild species of Canadian fish are at an all time low.

Who’s to blame?   Well, foreign fisheries have been blamed, and for years Canadian fishermen and their industry and government counterparts have conducted a persuasive campaign of disinformation, blaming the seals for the crash of Canada’s North Atlantic cod stocks, a previously immense Atlantic fishery, as well as for declines in numerous other fisheries.  

But experts say it’s not seals that are the problem, it’s humans.   Overfishing, habitat destruction, pollution, and now climate change – all resulting from human activities – have imperiled the availability of fish and seafood from Canada.

“Canada is one of the worst perpetrators of fisheries mismanagement,” says Barry Kent MacKay, of the Animal Protection Institute.   

 “The government of Canada has been virtually unable to manage any commercially viable marine species. Marine scientists and environmentalists have been warning the government for years about the crisis in the North Atlantic, but they have failed to act to protect the marine species or the fishermen who depend on the fish stocks for their living.”

In a recent article in the November 3^rd edition of the Vancouver Sun, Boris Worm, a fisheries biologist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, and co-author of a recently published Science Journal article on the decline of seafood, says “We are predicting we are going to run out of everything in the future if we don’t change our behaviour.”

According to Worm and his colleagues, if you want a healthy marine ecosystem, you need a diverse population of marine species.   That includes seals.

“ A stable, healthy ocean ecosystem needs large natural predators. All other big predators in Atlantic Canada, besides seals, have recently been eliminated,” says Debbie MacKenzie, director of the Grey Seal Conservation Society.

In an article published in the Halifax Herald, MacKenzie explains that   “A mass harvest of seals today carries a greater ecological risk to the ocean than it did when great hordes of large predatory fish shared the waters (cod, shark, halibut, etc.) and shared the seals’ ecological role.

“The food supply for fish is failing, and the oxygen content of seawater is falling, as the ecosystem becomes increasingly poor and degraded. Under this scenario, insisting on targeting the last surviving natural fish predator courts ecological disaster,” says MacKenzie.

So instead of waiting until the last cod is fished out of the North Atlantic, or the last seal’s pelt is made into a fur bikini, responsible and talented chefs are climbing on board the campaign.

“I t is refreshing to know that there are highly successful chefs out there who are willing to do the right thing,” says Pat Ragan, director of The HSUS ProtectSeals campaign.  

” The restaurants we have on our list are some of the best in the world. We have chefs who have been in the business for years and have been at the forefront of developing new directions in American cuisine.   They understand the importance of protecting the environment.   They want to serve healthy and delicious food and they are passionate about both.”

For more information or to join the Restaurant for Seals campaign, email either Fia Perera at fiasperera@yahoo.com or Karen Levenson at karen@animalalliance.ca

Chef2Chef News DeskNews at Restaurant.OrgResearch and MarketsNation's Restaurant NewsSpecialty Eatery News