Unmasking the truth in the propaganda war.

This article discusses how white seals are still being killed in Canada, despite the fact that their images are used in fundraising campaigns to stop such violence. In the fight for animal rights, the image is iconic: a sealer on a bobbing ice floe swings his club at the skull of a snowy-white pup, the blow sickeningly punctuated by a crimson splatter. The howls of protest that image evoked killed the commercial market for seal pelts in the early 1980s. In 1987, Canada acquiesced to European pressure and made the slaughter of the doe-eyed whitecoats illegal. Despite that ban, anti-sealing groups like the Humane Society of the United States, the International Fund for Animal Welfare and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society continue to exploit the image of the photogenic whitecoat in fundraising campaigns. Canadians still do kill baby seals. Harp seals shed their fluffy white fur about two weeks after birth -- and with it goes their protection from sealers. Opponents argue that the hunt, which began in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and continues off the coast of Newfoundland, remains barbaric no matter which photo is used.