Henties Bay — It is no exaggeration of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) when they say observing seal culling is an awful business. It is as ghastly as when taking the life of a human, with soul-piercing grunts of pain that accompany the misery of dying.

However, the seal cull is done in a manner that the SPCA finds to be in accordance with fisheries regulations.

Nonetheless, the seal-processing factory requires a high tolerance level for disgusting odours.

Mind you, by nature seals are very unhygienic mammals, with no sense of having separate areas for eating, sleeping and relieving themselves.

The stench is nauseating as workers wash, skin and grind, cook and put out various products from the catch of the day. The floors are slimy and slippery.

Yet in the end the fat is turned into Omega-3 oil and meat, excess fat into mince for animal feed production, and skin becomes fur for garments.

It is this foul-smelling processing of seals that distinguishes Namibia from other countries involved in the culling of seals, such as Canada where seals are brutally killed solely for their skins.

"We do not leave behind horrid scenes of skinned, blood-soaked seal carcasses lying around the beach in their hundreds," retort Namibian seal cullers.

The Namibian harvesting of seals involves a precise bashing on the head, followed by an immediate deep sharp knife slash to the heart.

The deep slash is to ensure that the animal 'does indeed die immediately, as well as ensuring that the blood flows out of the body', the harvesters contend.

In Canada and other countries, cullers use blunt objects with spikes at the end.

This week New Era vi-sited the factory site of one of Namibia's seal-harvest quota holders on several conditions, that include not publishing the precise location of the factory, or any names, for fear of being targeted by the anti-seal culling campaigns of animal rights organisations.

The factory supplies the Turkish manufacturers of seal leather and fur garments, the Hatem Yavuz Group of Companies.

The Namibian factory owners say they continue to receive hate mail that at times borders on "serious threats on their lives and family members".

The cullers say the first bash to the head kills the seal immediately. The blow cracks the skull, macerating the brains to a liquid pulp.

Yet, animal rights organisations, with the exception of the Namibian SPCA continue to insist that the culling is inhumane.

However, those involved in the culling of seals at Cape Cross stress that the harvesting of seals should be "looked at in a broader picture than the exaggerated version of how Namibia massacres innocent animals".

Namibians involved in the annual seal harvest say culling "is a stock-control mechanism based on various technical and scientific facts" and ensures that there is sufficient stock of fish in the sea. Seals consume fish and the more seals there are, the higher the quantity of fish they consume.

On the contrary, animal rights activists, such as Seal Alert's François Hugo, say stopping the culling would allow "Mother Nature to balance out itself and seals would start dying natural deaths due to lack of food and space".

Namibians disagree and ask: "What is best: leaving seals to die through starvation and to wash up along the beaches, or to harvest them through controllable mechanisms, where the country generates an extra income?"

In addition, say Namibian seal harvesters, the world is often misinformed about how Namibia conducts its harvest, with pictures of Canada's harvesting often displayed as evidence.

"In Namibia the picture is different. Unlike in Canada the entire seal is processed," say the Namibian seal cullers.

At the factory, the seals are washed first before their skin is removed. The third process involves removing fat from the skins. The skins are then treated with salt for export to garment manufacturers in Turkey. The fat is burned at various degrees Celsius until it reaches a desired stage and then cooled down for several weeks.

The cooling down allows the inferior fats to settle at the bottom, leaving the quality oil with a high content of Omega-3 to collect at the top.

The oil is exported to various clients around the world. The meat, together with excess fats and bones, are ground and then cooked at a specific temperature. It then turns into a mince mixture that gives off a strong stench.

The mince is dried and sold off to manufacturers of cattle feed for further processing.

"We leave nothing to waste and officials from the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources are constantly monitoring our harvesting," they say.

The Namibian culling season commenced on July 13 and attracted an unprecedented attack on the Namibian SPCA for giving the green light to the harvest, after the SPCA watched the first day of the harvest.

The SPCA expressed no problem with the culling, saying although the culling was horrible to watch, there were "no breaches of those fisheries regulations rele-vant to seal harvesting."

Seal Alert retaliated with a verbal assault, saying it "is not [a bona fide] animal rights organisation".

Hugo said the absence of Seal Alert invalidated the significance of the visit since "no any other animal rights organisations" were invited.

"The SPCA is not an animal rights organisation," he said.

Read comments. Write your own.

Copyright © 2010 New Era. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.

AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.