Irish Celebrities Launch New ARAN Campaign to Stop Canada Killing Seals

What have Eurovision winner Linda Martin, The Corr’s band member Jim Corr, Fair City’s Gerard Byrne, along with top Irish model and beauty Suzanne McCabe got in common? Compassion. That’s right, the fearsome-four led a hugely successful ARAN photocall and protest attended by up to 30 ARAN members for our new campaign launch outside the Canadian Embassy in Dublin.

The new campaign aims to switch some of the focus from Canada's games to Canada's shame. Linda Martin, Jim Corr, Gerard Byrne and Suzanne McCabe unveiled ARAN’s new campaign parody of the Olympic logo targeting the seal slaughter, and announced a relentless year-long campaign leading up to and through the 2010 Olympic Games. Animal Rights Action Network has been the leading campaign group and voice in Ireland speaking out for Canada’s seals and working on making sure that Ireland’s voice is heard in Europe. With a team of six volunteers working round the clock on the Irish campaign, we recently managed to persuade the Irish government to support an EU trade ban on seals products – their original plan was to support a ban which contained loop-holes and exemptions and would have done nothing to help end the cruelty in Canada. Prior to this success, we have been working hard behind the scenes encouraging Irish MEP’s such as Kathy Sinnott, Jim Higgins, Brian Crowley, Gay Mitchell, Proinsias De Rossa and others to back an EU trade ban. The good news is that all of the listed MEP’s have stated their full support for a total EU trade ban. We are now working on ensuring the other remaining MEP’s support a similar move. However, Galway based MEP Sean O Neachtain is a staunch supporter of Canada’s seal hunt and Liam Aylward has contacted us but has not given his opinion on the hunt, time will tell on where all the Irish MEP’s stand and ARAN will ensure everyone knows, including the media.

The campaign by Animal Rights Action Network is in full swing and we are sure you’ll agree that we genuinely are punching above our weight on this issue. ARAN has been doing letter writing and email campaigns to Irish MEP’s, Canadian authorities, Canadian Embassy in Dublin and letters to the editor. We have also been organizing protests to highlight the issue with more planned, and of course highlighting Irish MEP’s who are supporting Canada’s seal hunt and much more.

Please do what you can to put an end to this hunt! If you have not already done so, please visit www.bansealtrade.eu and send an automatic email to all your MEP’s and tell them how much you care about seeing an end to Canada’s barbaric slaughter of seals. Also we desperately need your financial support, please send ARAN a generous donation so that we can go ahead with our plans over the coming weeks and months and not have to worry about cancelling any of them. We will keep you personally informed of how your hard earned money is been put to immediate use to help Canada’s seals and other animals in desperate need. You’ll be part of a special group of ARAN members who make our work possible. Please, don’t leave it to someone else – help our campaign with a donation today.

See some short footage of the event, click here or here