Graphic anti-sealing PETA ad rejected by Canadian TV watchdog

This year's seal hunt has proceeded largely out of the media spotlight. No major disruptions by animal rights activists; no celebrities posing with cute baby seals on the ice.

Some say the annual hunt is dying as markets in the United States, Western Europe and Russia, which has taken the lion's share of seal products in recent years, close their doors.

But reaction to an anti-sealing TV ad shows the controversial cull remains a raw nerve among Canadians.

The Canadian Television Bureau has refused to approve the commercial produced by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) unless it agrees to cut one scene of a clubbed seal vomiting blood as it dies and another of a sealer dragging a seal carcass across the ice in a trail of blood.

In the ad, Vancouver-born actress and PETA supporter Emmanuelle Vaugier describes the slaughter of baby seals and makes a plea to lobby the federal government to end support for the hunt.

The Huffington Post reported that the bureau, a TV industry group that approves ads and public service spots, refused to endorse the lengthy ad without the changes.

"We can't approve the spot with those images," Jessica Bassermann, a senior bilingual telecaster analyst, told the group in an email earlier this month.

The animal rights group refused, saying the whole point is to demonstrate graphically how cruel and inhumane the hunt is.

"We think the truth should be shown," senior vice-president Dan Mathews told the Huffington Post.

"We think that if the government is this proud and goes to such great lengths to defend this program, this program should be seen by the country and by the people who pay for it."

PETA has posted the ad online instead.

The television bureau didn't spell out why it felt the images had to be deleted, Huffington Post reported.

PETA's attempt to do an end-run around the bureau and submit the uncut version directly to a TV station failed when CTV Edmonton turned it down, saying it agreed with the bureau's decision.

The commercial seal products industry, worth an estimated $10 million a year, is a tricky political problem in Ottawa. The main political parties have remained supportive because it's seen as providing a seasonal livelihood for about 6,000 sealers living in the Gulf of St. Lawrence region.

A spokeswoman for Conservative Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield wouldn't address PETA's claim Ottawa spends about $7 million a year "propping up this dying industry," as the ad states. But Erin Filliter defended the way the hunt is carried out.

"The seal hunt is also conducted in a humane and respectful way and the full use of animals harvested is strongly encouraged," she told the Huffington Post.

Liberal Senator Mac Harb is pushing a bill through the upper house to end the commercial hunt but it's unlikely to pass the Tory-dominated body.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada set this year's hunt quota at 400,000, but as of May 10, less than 70,000 seals had been taken, Postmedia News reported.

Attempts to find a new market for seal products in China to replace those lost in the U.S and Europe so far has not paid big dividends. Postmedia reported Statistics Canada figures show only about $642,000 worth of edible seal products have been exported to China.