Seal pitch

Fisheries Minister and industry reps take seal show to China.

“The Chinese eat anything. And they simply don’t understand why you would put one animal above another,” said Wayne Mackinnon, chairman of DPA Industries, which exports Omega 3 seal-oil capsules made from harp seal blubber. “I suspect that over the course of the next decade, the Chinese market alone could take all the seal products that we could make.”

Sales of seal-oil products like DPA’s might surpass sales of seal fur that was long the hunt’s raison d’etre, but the collapsing economics of the fur industry threaten Mr. Mackinnon’s business too: Unless sealers are hunting seals for fur, he won’t get blubber at a reasonable price.