The cruel and brutal Canadian seal hunt has begun on the ice floes off the coast of Newfoundland.

Over the coming weeks, thousands of beautiful, innocent baby seals will be clubbed or shot. With favourable ice conditions this year, 2022 is set to see this gruesome spectacle even more deplorable than usual.

Most of the seals killed are less than a few months old. At the time of slaughter, many of these pups have not yet eaten their first solid meal or taken their first swim, leaving them utterly defenceless against the sealers. The baby seals are killed for their fur and their carcasses are routinely left to rot on the ice. The official statistics are shocking enough, but these do not include the thousands of seals who have been wounded by sealers’ club or rifles and briefly escape under the ice, only to slowly die in agony.

As far back an independent veterinary panel studied the commercial seal hunt and concluded that it results in considerable and unacceptable suffering, with 43% of the seal examined likely to have been skinned whilst conscious.

Here’s what you can do today to help end this outrage forever:

• Add your name to our letter to Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada.

We are calling on Canada to end it’s cruel and unnecessary commercial seal hunt. Thousands upon thousands of young seals will be brutally killed by out of season fishermen. These beautiful, innocent animals are clubbed or shot before being skinned for an unnecessary product: fur.

The rest of the world, including the UK, is repelled by the extreme cruelty of the hunt. That’s why British groups, and others across Europe, were able to persuade the European Union to ban the import of seal products from the commercial seal hunt. This is something to be very proud of.

No livelihoods depend on the commercial seal hunt. For the fishermen involved, the seal hunt provides just a few days work in dangerous, degrading conditions, from which they derive less than 5% of their income.

Canada, a beautiful country with much to admire, continues to have its international reputation seriously damaged whilst it allows the gruesome killing of such wonderful animals.

I urge you and the Canadian government to seek a permanent end to the cruel and unnecessary commercial seal hunt. I look forward to the day when this annual brutality is made a thing of the past and Canada’s international reputation can be restored.

• Please donate to our campaign to save the seals.

We need to do more to finally end the seal hunt forever by increasing pressure on the Canadian government and to track where the seal products are sent to enable us to end this trade.

We rely entirely on donations, please help us by sending a donation today. We have a track record of success and are committed to end this barbarism.