UPDATED NEWS RELEASE:

Concerned citizens in Los Angeles and other major cities (both nationally and internationally) are reinforcing Sir Paul and Heather McCartney's plea to demand an end to the Canadian Seal Slaughter



For Immediate Release: March 14, 2006

Event Date: March 15, 2006

Time: 12:00 – 4:00 pm

Location: Consulate General of Canada, 550 South Hope Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90071

Contact: Ian Robichaud and Robb Mead, for Harpseals.org- (310) 392-4742

or Susan Hirsch -- (818) 825-0239 (cell) Sea Shepherd Conservation Society



Los Angeles – Celebrity guests include: Captain Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (co-founder of Greenpeace); Dan Haggerty (Grizzly Adams); the sexy Vegan Vixens; and more. There will also be a huge crowd of concerned citizens along with a mystery person in a seal costume who will all gather outside the Canadian Consulate, 550 South Hope Street, Los Angeles, to protest Canada's annual Harp seal slaughter and promote the boycott of Canadian seafood. This year, the Canadian government is ignoring its own mandate to apply the Precautionary Approach to ecological management as it stubbornly refuses to cancel the seal "hunt" despite ice conditions worse than ever before recorded. This situation poses a dire threat to the seal pups since they require thick, sturdy ice to hold them for weeks until they learn to swim.



The purpose of this gathering at the consulate is to demand the cancellation of this year's massacre and to request a permanent ban on the industrial slaughter of harp seals. Citizens will also educate passersby about the Canadian seafood boycott. This boycott is designed to put direct economic pressure on the Canadian fishing industry, the industry behind the largest slaughter of marine mammals in the world.

Each spring in Atlantic Canada, over 300,000 defenseless baby harp seals are massacred on the ice floes. In a matter of weeks, a pristine white nursery turns crimson, with hundreds of thousands of lifeless, skinless bodies strewn all over the ice. This industrial slaughter nets these off-season fishermen only about $40 a pelt.



The massacre is perpetrated by a few thousand Canadians who beat and shoot these seals and skin many of them alive. The money these sealers receive for this is only about 5% of their yearly income from fishing. If these fishermen only stayed home for an extra two weeks, they would continue to earn the Employment Insurance benefits that they earn every year during the off-season.

Since it is the support of the Canadian seafood industry that perpetuates the slaughter, the Canadian seafood boycott can pressure this industry to take a stand against this annual massacre and thus result in legislation in Canada to ban the slaughter of seals. Since the U.S. is the largest consumer of Canadian seafood, importing about 70% of Canada's seafood exports, American consumers alone can put enough pressure on Canada's seafood industry to end the massacres once and for all.



For more information, visit www.harpseals.org

Additional resources:

www.seashepherd.org; www.boycottcanadianseafood.org; www.protectseals.org