http://www.hsus.org/ace/20632
warning: there are some sad pictures.
At this year's Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, when celebrities Paris Hilton, Christina Applegate, and Taryn Manning were asked about "clubbing," instead of talking about their favorite hotspots, they spoke about baby seal clubbingâand their disapproval of it.
Parked at the Seven Jeans for All Mankind House, HSUS consultants Danny Seo and Claudine Gumbel educated celebrities about the cruel seal hunt in Canada. Among other hard-hitting facts, Seo and Gumbel told the stars:
Before the 2002â2003 sealing season, the Canadian government announced that hunters would be allowed to kill, over the next three years, close to one million seals by clubbing or shooting them.
Most of the seals killed are between 12 days and 12 weeks old.
Observers have noted that the young seals are often skinned while still alive.
The Canadian government justifies the massive huntâthe largest commercial slaughter of wildlife in the worldâby claiming that seals eat too many cod. Yet, according to most marine mammal and fisheries scientists, this argument is not based on scientific evidence, and it ignores the real possibility that seals, which prey on other predators of cod, may have a beneficial effect on cod stock recovery.
Without reservation, dozens of high-profile movie stars, musicians and even a few reality-TV celebritiesâThe Bachelor's Andrew Firestone and The Simple Life's Hilton and Nicole Richie, to be exactâsupported The HSUS and the rest of the Protect Seals coalition in its efforts to stop the brutality off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. The stars even quickly agreed to sign letters of protest and pose for photographers with mittens reading SAVE SEALS.
Other notable celebrities who signed letters to the Canadian Embassy demanding an end to the hunt included Macaulay Culkin, That 70's Show star Mila Kunis, Andrew Keegan, supermodel Carmen Kass, Christina Applegate's husband Jonathan Schaech, Joseph Reitman, Backstreet Boy Nick Carter, Johnny Galecki, Bree Turner, Shannon Elizabeth, Nora Dunn, Scrubs star Sarah Chalke, Emily Deschanel, and Summer Altice.
All of the celebrities put their finished letters into plastic air-sick bags, which were inscribed with the phrase: "What's Going on in Canada Will Make You Sick." On March 3, during the Protect Seals Rally, copies of the signed letters were hand-delivered to the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C.
In addition to the mittensâwhich were spotted all over SundanceâSeo created a handful of sweatshirts, with the slogan: "Club Sandwiches Not Seals."
"It was a last minute idea," Seo said. "I purchased a few dozen sweatshirts and had them silkscreened with the catchy phrase. I thought it was a cute way for celebrities to express their concern over seal hunting without having to say a thing when they get photographed by paparazzi all over Sundance."
The sweatshirts were such a hit that People magazine put them in its popular StyleWatch column, and they landed in the gossip pages of the New York Daily News and the Philadelphia Daily News, as well as in an Associated Press feature piece. There was even a full-page photo of Paris Hilton modeling her sweatshirt in US Weekly,, and garment became the topic of a live segment on Good Morning America.
What's more, in early March, USA Today listed the "Club Sandwiches, Not Seals" sweatshirt as one of the "Hot" items in The Trend Mill column.
After receiving hundreds of requests for the sweatshirts, the Humane Society of the United States quickly put a rush order on the tops, and have now made them available for sale online at protectseals.org. You can order your sweatshirt or mittens today and begin to show your support for the Save the Seals campaign.
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Protect Seals: What You Can Do
Canada's Unsustainable New Seal Hunt Plan
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