How to sell seal in 2024?

The Quebec industry is relying on a new argument to rebuild its image: its sustainability.

The number of seals in the Gulf of St. Lawrence continues to grow. Despite this fact, not much is happening in this industry that is just waiting to grow.

“Export.”

For entrepreneur Samuel Bilodeau, there is no need to beat around the bush to explain the stagnation of the seal industry: as long as exporting to key markets such as the United States or the European Union is not possible, this manufacturing sector will not develop here.

Bilodeau is an SME from Normandin, in Lac-Saint-Jean, which makes coats and accessories, including sealskin boots and mittens, which it sells mainly in Canada, as it cannot sell them elsewhere.

Even though hunting and processing methods have greatly evolved, this industry is stuck with a tenacious image, that of decapitated baby seals on white ice floes and the fronts of European activists who landed in Quebec in the 1970s until the early 2000s. The voices of Brigitte Bardot and Paul McCartney resonated loudly enough to close key markets, which are still locked down.

“We have to find a way to fight against the ghosts of the past,” says Doug Chiasson, executive director of the Fur Institute of Canada, who explains that part of the population has remained marked by the images and discourse of the 1970s, when whitecoat hunting has not been practiced for nearly 40 years in Canada.

“The Canadian government needs to do a lot of education work,” says Bilodeau. “But it also needs to do foreign affairs work to work with importing countries.” [potentiels] of these products.

Bilodeau uses pelts from Newfoundland and Labrador, where the largest number of seal hunters in the country are located.

“To have a healthy seal industry, we have to work with all the resources and export them everywhere,” says Samuel Bilodeau.

Unlike in the 1970s, three parts of the marine mammal are widely used commercially: its fat, its flesh and its skin.

“The seal business is only good if all the resources are transformed,” insists Samuel Bilodeau. “My suppliers won’t be able to survive if they just sell the skin. No one can do that. It wouldn’t be profitable. Today, producers harvest the skin, transform the oil into omega-3, and sell the meat.”

But things are starting to change in this industry: a new generation of consumers is more aware of current issues than of images from the past.

“We’re seeing a generational shift that’s happening now primarily between Gen X and millennials,” Chiasson says. The proliferation of seals has something to do with it.

According to Mr. Chiasson, fur is no longer seen in the same way; nor are seal products.

“There’s a completely different ecosystem today,” he said. “About 40 years ago, we had about 3,000 grey seals in the Gulf. Now we have 400,000 or 500,000.”

The way seal products are evaluated is also changing, explains Doug Chiasson: whereas before we looked at the hunting method, we now measure the impact of harvests on the ecosystem.

This “sea rat”…

In Ottawa, a report from the Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans published last spring severely criticizes the federal government’s inaction in managing this issue.

“The committee recommends combating misinformation and disinformation about seal populations, the seal hunt and the seal products industry in Canada, including by promoting reliable sources of information, and expanding market access for seal products,” it says.

Shortly after, In the middle of summer, the federal minister responsible for fisheries, Diane Lebouthillier, announced that she wanted to make things happen in the European Union, where the import of seal products has been practically banned since 2009. In her public statement, the minister called the seal a “sea rat,” a statement that did not go unnoticed in an industry that tries to promote the seal.

But the European Union did not wait for the Canadian minister: it is currently re-evaluating this ban, in the current context.

According to Gil Thériault, by increasing their catches, hunters would contribute, first and foremost, to a balance in the marine ecosystem.

“There’s warming waters, acidity of the waters, changes in currents, changes in predation patterns of prey,” he lists. “There are a lot of factors, but clearly, the seal is one of them. And it’s pretty much the only one that fishermen and hunters can influence to restore the ecosystem.”

Gil Thériault also maintains that an increase in hunting would be welcome in fishing regions that live with fluctuations, or even the collapse of fish or seafood stocks. Like in the Magdalen Islands, where the majority of Quebec seal hunters are located.

It is also in the Islands that the Côte-à-Côte butcher’s shop developed the market for seal meat, which is called sea wolf, in order to make it a gastronomic product – rather than a folkloric one intended for tourists.

“We are 15, 20 years ahead of everything that is happening in the world in marine mammal meat,” says Gil Thériault.

A sustainable product

Far from the Islands, in Mashteuiatsh, in Lac-Saint-Jean, a college technology transfer centre is working to enhance the value of fur from land animals. And it is also interested in seals.

“The seal is a predator, a carnivore that we have let go and which has developed exponentially,” says Louis Gagné, director of Écofaune boréale, the centre in question.

His reasoning is simple: the current situation requires better management of the resource, and therefore inevitably a possible increase in seal hunting.

Écofaune boréale is developing more environmentally friendly tanning techniques, eliminating chrome in favor of vegetable tanning agents, with processes that require less water, energy and chemicals.

The group has also just recovered equipment to transform the mammal’s fat into oil. Seal fat represents about 40% of its weight. An oil made from purified seal fat has no odor. “We can even make a vinaigrette,” says Louis Gagné.

The only thing left to do is sell the salad. Because even if things change, seal products are still difficult to swallow for some consumers.

The entire industry is measuring this very well and is betting big on this new ecological argument. “We are becoming a product of the circular economy,” says Louis Gagné, who is one of those who are banking on the development of the local market, first and foremost.

“The situation of the marine ecosystem requires the involvement of people,” he said. “It’s simple.”

“Quebecers must demand seal products.”