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Morrissey blasts Canadian politicians over seal hunt

The singer has criticized Canadian politicians over its annual seal hunt.
The singer has criticized Canadian politicians over its annual seal hunt.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
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Morrissey’s new album may claim that “World Peace is None of Your Business,” but he’s definitely making Canada’s annual seal hunt his business.

The singer and famously outspoken animal rights activist has fired a new round in an ongoing skirmish with Gail Shea, Canada’s minister of fisheries and oceans. Moz had previously published an essay decrying the annual commercial slaughter of seals in Canada, saying, “Canada’s sorry image is due entirely to its seal slaughter, which is greedy and barbaric, and it is dismaying to witness such ignorance in 2014.” (He also, in classic Moz form, said Canada is “regrettably fashionably dead.”)

Sophie Doucet, a spokeswoman for Shea, called Morrissey’s essay “another case of a millionaire celebrity, desperate for a hobby, shamelessly regurgitating misinformation and myths that fringe animal-rights groups have been pushing for years. ... I would urge Mr. Morrissey to consider the impact that his ignorant and inflammatory statements have on the livelihoods of thousands of hard-working men and women in rural communities.”

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Morrissey, never one to take such slights lying down, has offered a very spirited riposte.

“I should remind Sophie Doucet that building and maintaining the concentration camps of Auschwitz also provided livelihoods, but this hardly made the camps warranted. Let it also be added that the vast financial benefits of the seal slaughter are not directly intended for those hard-working men and women in rural communities, who, in fact, are merely used by the fisheries minister to do the messy task of searing flesh. ... I can assure Sophie Doucet that I know more about the seal hunt than I wish to know, and only by suppression of humanity could anyone look away and not care.

“Also, whether a challenge comes from a millionaire or from someone who is homeless is a remark that would only be made by someone of imperious ignorance, who cannot develop the moral debate, and whose own personal financial agenda comes before the lives of thousands of healthy beings.”

Both the U.S. and Eurpoean Union have banned sales of seal fur, and the U.S. Senate called for an end to the annual seal hunt in 2009.

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