THE Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) is investigating ways of ending the clubbing of seals to death at the Cape Fur Seals Namibia.

The move by the SPCA comes after viewing the footage now on the Internet posted by the South African award-winning filmmaker and the British journalist who were recently arrested for illegally filming seal culling at Cape Fur.
“We have no intention of stopping the culling but we are going to leap into action regarding the methods used and see that the culling can be done in a more humane manner,” said an SPCA committee member adding that they will use the Animal Protection Act.
The video footage has been described as ‘barbaric and cruel beyond words’ by animal lovers.
Francois Hugo of Seal Alert who is actively lobbying the SPCA to arrest and charge the seal cullers with cruelty and take the seal colony into custody as per Animal Protection Act  claims that the society is duty bound to take action and place the Cape Cross seal colony including the “owner” or sealing rights holders into “custody”.
 According to Seal Alert the video footage seen by the SPCA, World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) and National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NSPCA) clearly shows that the manner in which the seal cullers are operating is cruel and in violation of sealing regulations.
 The footage also explicitly shows numerous seals being clubbed repeatedly on various parts of their bodies and in pain and stress.
Regulations require that a seal receive one effective club to the head to achieve instantaneous death and the immediate piercing of the heart to ensure a humane death, free of pain.
 According to the Animal Protection Act, it is an offence and cruel for any person to ill-treat, neglect, infuriate, torture or maim or beat, kick, goad or terrify an animal.
 An offender of this conduct must be brought before a police charge office and charged under the Act.
Seal Alert-SA has called for an end to what they claim to be a “cruel way of slaughtering” seal pups because of the clubbing.
The Namibian Minister of Fisheries has granted two seal holders rights and a quota for 2009 to harvest 85,000 seal pups at Cape Cross Seal Colony and at Wolf/Atlas Bay Seal Colonies.
 The seal culling season runs from July1 to November 15 annually.