Karen Levenson directed Animal Alliance Canada’s ten-year campaign to end the slaughter of Canada’s harp seals beginning in 2004. ‘Confessions of an Animal Rights Terrorist’ is her account of her tireless effort. It is a memoir of animal rights activism in the face of blatant government fraud and obstruction. But it is also a story of personal strength and growth as Karen worked to end the violent seal hunt while simultaneously battling domestic violence and her husband’s fatal disease. The Animals Voice asked Karen about her book, animal rights activism, and what is next for her.
After everything, what was the catalyst that sat you down writing the book?
I hold images inside my head of the baby seals I and my colleagues failed to save. One especially poignant photograph I have, taken in 2008, is of a mother harp seal nuzzling her baby on a large pan of ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The tenderness and love that they communicate through their eyes are unmistakable. I have imprinted that image in my brain. Knowing that baby likely did not survive the seal hunt that year pushed me to write the book.
I spent about seven years researching and studying the seal hunt historically, economically, and politically, and during that time I got a chance to uncover a wealth of information in government documents and memos that contradicted the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) official talking points and website propaganda. I love investigative journalism, and the hunt for information, so it became a quest to uncover the truth about the seal hunt, not as I saw it as an animal activist or other colleagues in anti-sealing activism saw it, but through the government’s own words.
For years, the DFO’s mantra was that the commercial seal hunt is lucrative and a necessary source of income for poor fishing families. Fisheries bureaucrats definitively stated that the seal hunt wasn’t subsidized. They lied to Canadian taxpayers. I thought taxpayers should know. It continues today. Canadian tax dollars are funneled into the economic black hole of the seal hunt and there is no return on the investment for Canada.
Are you still working for Animal Alliance Canada? And if so, what are the current campaigns? If not, what is your activism outlet presently?
Most recently, I ran as a candidate for the Animal Protection Party of Canada in the September 2021 federal election in Canada to draw attention to animal agriculture’s massive contribution to climate breakdown. My current activism centers around promoting the Plant Based Treaty, similar to the Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty, and getting world leaders to commit to phasing out subsidies to animal agriculture and the fishing industry, two of the worst contributors to climate breakdown and biodiversity collapse.
Since there was not a hunt last year due to COVID, has the harp seal population increased?
COVID cut short the commercial hunt for young harp seals in 2020. Only about 400 seal pups were killed off the coast of Newfoundland, and a minimal number in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. So, while young harp seals did die at the hand of sealers that year, fewer lost their lives than in previous years.
A greater death toll occurred for seals in 2021 at the hands of commercial fishermen, despite COVID, and lack of market demand for seal products globally. When I see politicians and fishermen talking about the harp seal population increasing, my stomach knots. It is a dog whistle to those willing to enact the same type of virulent, hateful violence on seals as other supremacists do on people. The population will grow or not grow based on the ocean’s carrying capacity—meaning the availability of food and other life supports like thick, stable sea ice which harp seals need to survive. Overfishing and climate change threaten the survival of the harp seal population just as they do human survival.
After so many years working to end the seal hunt, how do you remain hopeful we will eventually shut it down?
As an activist, I find that stopping to think about failing paralyzes me. Ultimately, animal rights is about people—changing people’s behavior. Animals can’t make the changes they need to survive on their own. I don’t think there has been a better time to inspire change than now. The pandemic, biodiversity loss, and climate breakdown are all part of the same source: the reckless exploitation of animals and their habitats for human gain. My hope is that changemakers can work together to help people bring about the changes in lifestyle and diet we need to protect humans and nonhumans.
How was running for office? If you had been elected, could you have made any headway towards change? Do you think you will ever try again?
I love running for office and likely will run again, not because I expect to win, but because I expect my conversations during the election will educate people. I love having a public platform to speak about the central issues of our times: animal agriculture and the fisheries industries are among the greatest threats to our planet, to our families, and to our immediate futures.
Along with fossil fuels, the animal consumption industries have their fingers on the temperature controls of our planet. Almost every other social justice issue, from sexism and racism to poverty and health disparity, can be traced back to the colonializing takeover of land and water resources and the genocide of human and nonhuman species for profit. The consumptive lifestyles and diets most people try to protect are killing us.
But being elected isn’t the only means for change. Our political systems are failing. The industries that need to end are the same ones that have the most influence on the “ruling class”—our politicians. Change must come from the bottom up. Every individual has within their power the ability to shift their lifestyle and diet closer to plant-based and to stop amassing products. We can all learn to take less and do less harm.
What does this have to do with the seal hunt? The Government of Canada subsidizes the same industries that are killing the planet, wiping out species, making people sick, and spreading death and destruction throughout the planet. The fishing industry is the main driver of the seal hunt. Fishermen kill seals because seals compete with them for seafood. Many Canadian politicians abhor the seal hunt, but they are prevented by their party leaders and colleagues from speaking out.
Where does Justin Trudeau actually stand on the issue of the seal hunt?
When he was first elected as a Member of Parliament, he and his wife, Sophie, posed for a photograph showing off their matching seal skin hats. In Canadian politics, it is political suicide to fight against the killing of seals, and Trudeau knows it. Politicians win votes by supporting the seal hunt and by scapegoating seals for the declines of marine species such as cod and crab caused by overfishing.
Trudeau could speak out against the seal hunt, and he could end it. He doesn’t because doing so goes against the Liberal Party’s political interests, as it does the interests of Canada’s other main political parties with enough seats in Parliament to form the government: The Conservatives and the National Democratic Party, known as the NDP.
Animal activists are often called “terrorists” by the animal industry and by the media. Is this working for them?
Those who profit from the status quo know how to mobilize our fear. Labeling activists as “terrorists” or “radicals” or “extremists” doesn’t tell people anything about them or what they think or why they act as they do. The media has been the chief propaganda machine of the status quo. That’s changing with solutions journalism: a way of presenting issues in all their complexity from a multiplicity of sides rather than in binary terms; for instance, as two-sided “us against them,” “good versus evil” struggles. The binary framing of any issue allows it to become polarizing because the issue is presented simply and narrowly without context or complexity.
Most issues have many sides, not just two. Increasing numbers of journalists are realizing this and responsible media outlets have been moving away from traditional “he said/she said” journalism into a solutions-based approach. Armed with a broader understanding of issues and what’s at stake allows people to see opportunities for joining together and fighting the problem, not each other.
You said recently, “We have choices. Our choices matter. Recognizing this is humbling and life-changing.” What more can we do to ensure people are getting the message? For example, do they know that the crab they eat in Florida fuels a seal hunt they are against in Canada? How can we achieve more transparency in the industry?
We all contribute to the demise of seals and other marine and land species. If you drive cars, you are emitting CO2 into the atmosphere, and if you eat meat, you are consuming food produced on farms that emit three greenhouse gas emissions: methane, CO2, and nitrous oxide. Greenhouse gases warm the oceans, melt the sea ice needed for mother harp seals to give birth and force other marine species who rely on cold ocean temperatures to either migrate north or go extinct.
Overfishing—and Canada is the overfishing capital of the world—reduces the prey (food) for all marine species. The crab someone eats in Florida has been fished from emissions-heavy diesel boats. Likely fishermen on those boats view seals as competition and have been granted permission by our federal government to kill them outside of the days designated for commercial sealing.
It’s not that the industry isn’t transparent, it’s that the media doesn’t investigate the fishing industry, and the damage it causes to all marine life in the same way as it investigates issues it considers high profile.
My colleagues recently fought the BC government that wanted to reintroduce a west coast seal and sea lion hunt. Animal Alliance of Canada circumvented the reintroduction for now. But that doesn’t mean the BC fishing industry won’t try again. It’s unlikely that a Florida newspaper would include an article about where the state’s restaurant industry acquires its seafood or what kind of damage goes on during the fishing season off the east or west coasts of Canada.
What else would you like our readers to know about you, the seal hunt, animal activism in general?
Most animal protection issues are complex. The media needs to provide opportunities for animal protection stories to be told in all their complexity and from the many points of view held by stakeholders.
Until recently, traditional news media shunned investigative opportunities for exposing climate breakdown. They still shun topics related to nonhuman animals. Or if they cover them, it is often done superficially. We can reap huge economic, environmental, and public health benefits by protecting animals and ending the animal consumption industries.
People fear change and loss. We see change through the lens of loss. But when we shift our lifestyle and diet to plant-based consumption, we gain in all sorts of areas: longevity, health, plant-based job opportunities and businesses, cheaper and healthier food, increases in wild spaces and species, neighborhood beautification through rewilding, community engagement, and connection to nature. Change can bring huge benefits. But we are wired to perceive negatives first and to fight against losing that which we already have, even when it isn’t good for us. But when we do, we also fight against gain.
‘Confessions of an Animal Rights Terrorist’ is available from Lantern Books. Or on Amazon.
