Harp seals as young as three weeks old are shot or beaten, impaled with metal hooks, or even have the skin ripped off their bodies as Canada's commercial seal hunt gets underway. It is now the largest marine-mammal slaughter in the world, with up to 330 000 harp seals killed annually.

In 2001, a report by an independent team of veterinarians who studied the hunt concluded that governmental regulations regarding humane killing were neither being respected nor enforced, and that the seal hunt failed to comply with Canada's basic animal welfare standards. Shockingly, the veterinarians found that in 42% of the cases they studies, the seals had likely been skinned alive while conscious.