Friday, October 10, 2008

Clubbing Baby Seals

The idea of freshly clubbed baby seal is met with repulsion by hippies and members of PETA, but to the Eskimo’s, fresh baby seal is a real treat. I was in Eskimo country recently and I was surprised to find out that they can hunt all sorts of unique goodies, including seagulls, seal meat and whales.




I ♣ Baby Seals

At the market, the seal meat is a vivid red, and it almost turns black then cooked:


Freshly-clubbed seal meat for sale in Greenland

I was recently in Newfoundland, an area crippled by the withdrawal of Red Lobster Corporation who stopped buying their shellfish as a direct protest to the clubbing of baby seals.

Newfoundland is a foreign place in many ways, not to mention that their time is 90 minutes off from EST, a situation which presents a huge timezone problem for anyone who does computer globalization.

There is much to see in Newfoundland, most notably L'Anse Aux Meadows, the site of the first North American Viking settlement which was inhabited centuries before.
The Newfie’s are a nice bunch of folks, and like rednecks, they are the butts of many jokes which they call Newfie Jokes:



In the USA, some animals are protected, and the only way to kill them is if you are being attacked and they are coming right for you:

While clubbing baby seals looks cruel, the Newfie’s tell a different tale. They say that the ravenous seal population destroys their fish crop and it’s absolutely necessary to thin the herd. They say that the least painful ways to kill baby seals is to walk right up to them and whack ‘em on the head:



With bullets, the babies risk suffering.

They also say that the baby seals taste much better than the adult deals, which have a very strong fishy and gamey flavor. It’s like the difference between lamb and mutton.

Incidentally, the Eskimos say that baby seal has a fishy taste and it has a distinct gamey flavor which most Americans would find disgusting. I’d like to say that it tastes like chicken, but it tastes more like seagull, which they sell in their public markets:



We Americans are hypocrites when it comes to the slaughter of baby seals. The baby seal harvest is no more gruesome than the slaughter of baby lambs, and just as violent. Where I live, the farmers slit their throats and hang them upside down while they are still alive so that the last beats of their hearts flush the blood from their dying baby bodies: