Canada, Where’s The Seal Meat
- Thread starter Liberalman
- Start date
Hello all,
Here are a few quick points and I hope I can answer some questions raised. On seal meat, there are basically two ways in which it can be processed or sold:
1) Through a provincial vendor license. This is by-far the easier of the two methods, and if you ever come to Newfoundland or go to Quebec, there are numerous local vendors who could sell you seal meat, prepared or otherwise, in numerous different forms. Inspections, quality control, etc. would be handled under the respective provincial Department of Health. Unfortunately, like moose meat or any other game meat (though seal is not game, see below), vendor licenses are issued for provincial use only... you can't sell out of province through this method.
2) Through federal inspection - and this is always the case when seal meat is processed for sale overseas (to Korea, for example). CFIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency) needs to approve a processing facility, a Quality Management Program, etc. and do on-site product inspections. To the best of my understanding, you have not seen seal meat for sale under these auspices in downtown Toronto - not because there isn't some potential interest (from experience I can tell you that it IS healthy and it IS worth trying - probably even certifiably organic), but simply because we are talking about economies of scale here, and a lot of regulations, start up costs, risk, etc... Not saying it can't be done, BUT the ground work is not laid for domestic sale. Maybe it's really a bit chicken and egg (not literally of course, cause they're everywhere!).
Another strange point: for seal meat processing one would deal with a whole different set of federal standards than do meat processing facilities because the resource origin comes under DFO's jurisdiction (therefore in processing, for all intents and purpose, a seal is considered a fish). I'm not sure if the latter point has had any bearing on barring entrepreneurial start-ups in the past, but I'm throwing it out there as an FYI.
Otherwise one must consider where the meat comes from, where on the seal I mean. For the vast majority of seals hunted, we are talking about juvenile animals (NOT "babies", and NOT still nursing or even anywhere near the mothers, which abandon them, despite the one of the many signature lies PETA likes to tell). But essentially we have a young animal whose fat (blubber, what have you) makes up about half its weight round (fat is 100% utilized, turned into a very high-grade marine oil that is arguably better than fish oil for it's Omega 3 qualities - and you CAN buy that in Toronto, far as I know, or you can order out of province). Then after you take away the pelt (hide / fur - pelt and fat alone make up something like 70% of the useable weight of the animal), the best part of the animal for meat is (are) the "flippers" (actually we are talking about shoulder meat here). After that we have the carcass, which is very nice to eat when roasted, but really you're picking meat off bones at this point...
OK - what else ? You mentioned that Canada "endorses" seal meat, but I"m not sure what you mean. The GoC definitely does not market or subsidize the sale of any seal product - nor do they "manage the seal population to protect fish" (this would be considered a cull, which is something akin to extermination, i.e. "pest control". The GoC's (DFO's) job is to manage the hunt (quotas, practices, safety, etc.), and they do so in a manner that actually is meant to sustain the population (so the complete opposite of a cull, which would depress it), within a certain range of maximum-observed level, which is...
Apprx. 6 million harp seals now - again, the highest level ever observed (unless you believe Paul Watson's BS claim that Basque Whalers counted 20 million seals somewhere back in the 15-1600's... which I don't - how would they even count them? - this is just more imaginative spin made to make the GoC's science sound not credible when the media sticks a mic in his face - it's actually quite amazing how GOOD Canada's science is on harp seal populations, world-leading infact).
Final point - seal farms? You've got to be kidding me! Seals are one of, if not the most plentiful, well-conserved wild marine resource that Canada has (save maybe algae, or something like that) - WHY would we want to farm them? I'll never say never, but this will never happen
.
Cheers,
DB.
Seals and Sealing Network - Committed to the conservation and sustainable use of the world’s seal resources
Here are a few quick points and I hope I can answer some questions raised. On seal meat, there are basically two ways in which it can be processed or sold:
1) Through a provincial vendor license. This is by-far the easier of the two methods, and if you ever come to Newfoundland or go to Quebec, there are numerous local vendors who could sell you seal meat, prepared or otherwise, in numerous different forms. Inspections, quality control, etc. would be handled under the respective provincial Department of Health. Unfortunately, like moose meat or any other game meat (though seal is not game, see below), vendor licenses are issued for provincial use only... you can't sell out of province through this method.
2) Through federal inspection - and this is always the case when seal meat is processed for sale overseas (to Korea, for example). CFIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency) needs to approve a processing facility, a Quality Management Program, etc. and do on-site product inspections. To the best of my understanding, you have not seen seal meat for sale under these auspices in downtown Toronto - not because there isn't some potential interest (from experience I can tell you that it IS healthy and it IS worth trying - probably even certifiably organic), but simply because we are talking about economies of scale here, and a lot of regulations, start up costs, risk, etc... Not saying it can't be done, BUT the ground work is not laid for domestic sale. Maybe it's really a bit chicken and egg (not literally of course, cause they're everywhere!).
Another strange point: for seal meat processing one would deal with a whole different set of federal standards than do meat processing facilities because the resource origin comes under DFO's jurisdiction (therefore in processing, for all intents and purpose, a seal is considered a fish). I'm not sure if the latter point has had any bearing on barring entrepreneurial start-ups in the past, but I'm throwing it out there as an FYI.
Otherwise one must consider where the meat comes from, where on the seal I mean. For the vast majority of seals hunted, we are talking about juvenile animals (NOT "babies", and NOT still nursing or even anywhere near the mothers, which abandon them, despite the one of the many signature lies PETA likes to tell). But essentially we have a young animal whose fat (blubber, what have you) makes up about half its weight round (fat is 100% utilized, turned into a very high-grade marine oil that is arguably better than fish oil for it's Omega 3 qualities - and you CAN buy that in Toronto, far as I know, or you can order out of province). Then after you take away the pelt (hide / fur - pelt and fat alone make up something like 70% of the useable weight of the animal), the best part of the animal for meat is (are) the "flippers" (actually we are talking about shoulder meat here). After that we have the carcass, which is very nice to eat when roasted, but really you're picking meat off bones at this point...
OK - what else ? You mentioned that Canada "endorses" seal meat, but I"m not sure what you mean. The GoC definitely does not market or subsidize the sale of any seal product - nor do they "manage the seal population to protect fish" (this would be considered a cull, which is something akin to extermination, i.e. "pest control". The GoC's (DFO's) job is to manage the hunt (quotas, practices, safety, etc.), and they do so in a manner that actually is meant to sustain the population (so the complete opposite of a cull, which would depress it), within a certain range of maximum-observed level, which is...
Apprx. 6 million harp seals now - again, the highest level ever observed (unless you believe Paul Watson's BS claim that Basque Whalers counted 20 million seals somewhere back in the 15-1600's... which I don't - how would they even count them? - this is just more imaginative spin made to make the GoC's science sound not credible when the media sticks a mic in his face - it's actually quite amazing how GOOD Canada's science is on harp seal populations, world-leading infact).
Final point - seal farms? You've got to be kidding me! Seals are one of, if not the most plentiful, well-conserved wild marine resource that Canada has (save maybe algae, or something like that) - WHY would we want to farm them? I'll never say never, but this will never happen
.Cheers,
DB.
Seals and Sealing Network - Committed to the conservation and sustainable use of the world’s seal resources