International Whaling Commission

Executive summary • In this report, we present data from three sources to examine the welfare aspects of the commercial Canadian seal hunt as it currently operates. These sources are: (i) 17 post mortem examinations of harp seal pups killed in 2007; (ii) videos supplied by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) showing 169 seals killed by over 20 different sealing boats during the hunts in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007; and (iii) an Expert Opinion Analysis where 133 experts were sent 30 randomly-selected timelines where each showed the sequence of events extracted from the videos for a single seal kill and asked "How do you rate the overall welfare of this animal during the processes which resulted in its death?". • Both the seal carcasses and the videos were a random sample and the data in this report provide a comprehensive overview of the pattern of sealing undertaken across a broad spectrum of ice conditions and by different sealin