ANOTHER VOICE
We should not sit in judgment on Chinese penis-hunters
CHARLES MOORE
Swap the Vietnamese jungle for Cana- dian icefields, and it is like a scene out of Apocalypse Now as the helicopters drop in close formation to land on what was once a bloody battlefield,' says the report in the Daily Mail. 'Butchery goes on. To help stop it, sign this letter now,' says the Daily Mirror. This is not some mere war where people are killing people. This is a moral issue. This is seals.
It seems that men in Canada are killing harp seals in greater numbers than before because the fishermen believe that the seals are eating all the cod. There is said to be a growing market for seals, partly because a factory in China has found a way of turning their skins into something that looks like cowhide (`They pulp and squeeze the pups for every last penny' — Daily Mirror), and partly because lots of Chinamen like grind- ing down the bones of seals' penises (hav- ing a bone in their penises is one of the numerous ways in which seals are different from people), sprinkling the powder into rice wine and improving their sexual per- formance as a result. On the Caspian Sea, apparently, thousands of Caspian seals are being killed for similar reasons. John Major could have raised this issue with Boris Yeltsin, but, says the Daily Mirror, he refused to do so, callously preferring to talk about Bosnia.
According to the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the fishermen's anger is unfounded because only 1 per cent of harp seals eat cod. This claim is based on a study in 1986 of 1,559 harp seal stomachs, only 1 per cent of which contained identifiable cod. But since more than 1,000 of the stom- achs held no identifiable food matter at all, the percentage is meaningless. The facts on the other side of the argument seem tenu- ous too. According to Dr John Harwood of the Seal Mammal Research Unit in Cam- bridge, harp seals spend only a third of their time in the Gulf of St Lawrence and the other two thirds in the Arctic, so it is hard to know what they do get up to. They have small mouths and therefore you are unlikely to see them greedily scoffing whole cod in the way our own dear grey seals wolf down salmon. On the other hand, there are more than 2 million of the beasts, and they do like fish.
Dr Harwood tells me that he thinks oceanographic shifts — such as changes of current altering migration patterns — may be responsible for the disappearance of the cod, but the main point he emphasises is that nobody knows. All that is clear is that this is not really an argument about conser- vation. Dr Harwood says that in the past seal species have been threatened by too much killing, and that the seal, being a creature with 'sluggish population dynam- ics', is more vulnerable than, say, fish stocks. But there is no chance of harp seals `crashing into extinction' (Daily Mail) because of the Chinese penis-hunters.
The facts, one quickly realises, have almost nothing to do with , the argument. This is a battle between those who want to defend or make their living by killing baby seals, and those who want to make theirs by saving them and excoriating their killers. This sort of moral conflict is characteristic of modern times. Which side to be on? I hope every decent person will shout, 'Yours in the ranks of death!'
I must admit I have never killed a seal, and would find it very hard to do so. They are as sweet to look at as everyone says. My wife and I have lain for hours 'breaking the silence of the seas beyond the farthest Hebrides' by singing to them. We find that they like an imitation of bagpipe music best, and come almost to the shore listen- ing in mute wonder. It is not necessarily sentimental to love an animal — or plant, or rock, come to that — because its appear- ance reminds one of lovable human charac- teristics: one's imagination exists to make such connections. But it is sentimental to conclude that these resemblances make it wrong to kill the creature in question. Almost every time I have refused to kill an animal or bird has been an occasion for shame: I have refused not out of concern for life but out of weakness at the prospect of death. I have left a rabbit injured at the roadside because of the unpleasantness of killing it, or let someone else finish off a pricked pheasant, because their apparent resemblance to a suffering person upset me.
Of course, one does not, in the ordinary course of events, come across a wounded seal needing to be put out of its misery. But if it is, in principle, all right to kill a cow to eat it or to make leather of its hide, why is it wrong to do something similar with a seal? It would only be so if seals would die out as a result or if the method of killing were cruel. As I have said, there are plenty of seals. As for the death of the pups, it seems to be achieved by clubbing them. This looks nasty because the victim is vul- nerable and the blood shows up so much against the white fur and snow, but is it unnecessarily slow or painful?
Another objection is that seal pelts go to rich women who do not need fur coats, and that aphrodisiacs are a 'sick trade'. But rich women don't need to be rich, or to con- tribute funds to animal charities or do almost any of the things that they do. Why is need relevant? If the killing is humane, there is nothing wrong with the fur coat. As for the aphrodisiacs, who are we to sit in judgment on 600 million Chinese males groaning under communist-capitalism? If a few seal penises can help them through their dismal evenings these dear furry crea- tures will not have died in vain.
Many may agree that their seal zeal is excessive, but still be inclined to say that at least it shows some sort of decency, a basi- cally admirable, if misguided, concern for the weak and defenceless. Better the tabloids should contain exposes of seal- killing, they might argue, than sneaked photographs of the Princess of Wales in a gym. I wonder. The sentimentality about animal death and pain does seem to accom- pany, even to augment, a self-righteous cru- elty towards human beings. It deeply affects the moral attitudes of the young in particu- lar, who are propagandised about animal welfare at school. There is something gen- uinely deranged about a moral universe that protests at the destruction of baby seals and approves of the destruction .of. human foetuses. I am not the first to point' this out, but it is no coincidence that those who so often treat people like beasts tend to treat beasts like people.
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