Today, after a long struggle, the European Union has finally voted to ban all seal products. This is a huge victory for the seals, and hopefully it will go a long way to ending the massacre of any more Canadian baby seals.

Even before it passed, it seems the threat of the ban already devastated the baby seal hunting industry. In 2006, seal pelts sold for $105, while this year they sold for $14 each.

The result being, Canada had a quota of 280,000 seals this year, but the sealers ultimately only bothered to slaughter 59,500. Longtime seal hunter and seal hunt advocate Jack Troake stated, "We just couldn't seal for those prices. The prices were too low."

Canada's government tried many things, including sending Inuit seal hunters to the European Parliament to plead Canada's case for them, before the EU finally voted in favor of the ban. Canada's great effort against the ban and the dramatic drop in seal pelt prices both indicate that the seal hunt will no longer be worth it post EU ban. Hopefully the permanent end of the hunt is now imminent.

On Tuesday, March 3rd, a Canadian senator made the unorthodox move of proposing an end to the annual Canadian baby seal hunt. The proposal has been getting less than an enthusiastic response in the Canadian government, but it's the first step towards ending the largest annual slaughter of marine mammals in the world, and you can show your support for this move.

Canadian senator Mac Harb proposed to end the annual commercial seal hunt, which results in the deaths of over 200,000 seals in Canada annually (over a quarter of a million seals in 2008), although no one in the Canadian senate voted to second his proposal.

Despite a lack of local support, Harb's proposal is indicative of the entire world's growing disgust of the baby seal pelt industry. For instance, a day before Harb's proposal, the European Union's parliament (internal market and consumer protection committee) voted to support the ban of all seal products. Not only that, but even Russia has now banned its own baby seal hunt, as Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin stated that the "bloody industry" should have been banned long ago.

Once again, the Canadian proposal has lacked support in Canada's government. But you can show your own support for the bill. To send letters of support, the e-mail address for Senator Mac Harb is harbsealbill@sen.parl.gc.ca, and his postal address (free postage since it's to the House) is:

Senator Mac Harb: House of Commons
Parliament Buildings
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada
K1A 0A6

For more information on the Canadian seal hunt, the marine conservation group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has a helpful page on hunt facts.

• SuperVegan's 2nd birthday party is tonight!! Come on out to 'sNice Brooklyn, 315 5th Avenue at 3rd Street in Park Slope, 6:30pm-10pm. Complimentary cake and keg (feel free to bring supplementary alcohol, too), plus an all-vegan menu of other goodies (that you'll have to pay for) from 'sNice.


• I know you all think Vegan Treats cakes are great (unless you're one of those who ate too much and ODed), so maybe you'd like to read this profile of VT and proprietor Danielle Konya. Also, check out our best attempt at an up-to-date list of NYC restaurants that carry Vegan Treats.


• PETA has annoyed KFC Canda enough that the fried-chicken giant is actually making some changes! Says KFC Canada president Steve Langford, "(PETA) can be unpleasant to deal with, and from a business point of view, it's nice to put that behind you." General welfare upgrades will happen to how they (mis)treat their chickens, and they'll be introducing some kind of vegan faux-chicken to the menu. Sounds nasty to me, but I guess if I'm on a lonely highway in the wilds of Canada, I'd be glad to have it.


• I was going to write a whole blog post about Polyglot Vegetarian's phenomenal article on historical Branded Meat Substitutes, but I simply haven't had time to read the damn thing yet. If you're into the history of veg food, or simply into history, go read it. And you must check out the included poem from 1904, "To a Health-Food Girl." Hail to thee, Granola Maid!

• Friday on Oprah: Taking a cue from HSUS, Lisa Ling uses a hidden camera to investigate the cruelty of puppy mills. (When did Ling become the reporter of all things freegan and animal-related?)
• The San Francisco Art Institute has taken down an exhibit that featured videos of six animals being bludgeoned to death. Unfortunately, it did so before the public forum was held because of death threats to its staffers. Go hypocrisy!
• The Canadian seal hunt began earlier this week.
• The Rotterdam Zoo is making all of its animals go veg, for health reasons. Even the carnivores...?
• Meanwhile, in Germany, apparently ”zoo” is synonymous with “factory farm.”
• In another giant step for I don’t know what, scientists are hoping to train fish to “catch” themselves. Because why do the harvesting, too, when you can confine your actions to killing and consuming? (At least then maybe there'd be no call for shows like this.)
• And because I can’t handle any more depressing stuff today: Enter your film, poem, needlepoint, etc., in NAVS’ 19th Annual Art for Animals Classic. If your piece wins, it will grace National Anti-Vivisection Society materials (plus you’ll get some cash). Click here for the PDF entry form and rules, or call 800-888-NAVS (6287). The deadline is May 2.

Courtesy of Coquette Faux Furriers, a five-year-old operation hailing from Victoria, Canada "with the desire of creating affordable cruelty-free glamour accessories." Accessories like this White Mink stole ("features little faux legs in addition to the tail").

Please comment below if this mink stole--or perhaps the polar bear skin rug ("head can be used as a pillow!")--appeal to you. This is very important journalistic research.

The curtains have been raised, and Jason "Herman Thrust" Doucette's Vegan Porn has been reborn as Taste Better Dot Com (it's good to know his mind's still in the gutter). Go check it out and see what he's wrought.

Those cryptic pre-release videos I mentioned yesterday are on the new site, in case you haven't seen them yet. In fact, it looks like virtually the entire "blog" section of Vegan Porn has been rolled into the Tastes Better archive.

The new site is much better looking, and Jason's got some ambitious multimedia plans. Really all that's missing is the nattering of the now-orphaned Vegan Porn community. If you miss that, go read their whining in the comments here.

So for the past couple days, Jason "Herman Thrust" Doucette, proprietor of Vegan Porn, has been posting cryptic talking-head videos of himself. He's cooking up some extremely fundamental changes, and rather than typing about it, he's (for lack of a better word) vloggoing it.

Basically, Vegan Porn is no more, but it will be replaced by something new and different. All we know about that something is that it won't have the word "vegan" in the title, and it won't involve a forum. Jason makes a big point of encouraging folks to set up their own blogs and forums instead. Of course, any and all Vegan Porn refugees are most welcome here on SuperVegan (our forum's a little lonely these days).

Fuller details of the new site should be revealed some time today (Thursday). It's too early to say if I'll miss and mourn Vegan Porn. I'm sure whatever Jason's cooking up is gonna be awesome, cause he never fails to do good work. (And he really doesn't look like he's been getting much sleep, which is always a sign of high productivity.) As long as the new site still features Jason writing about veg and animal issues, I'm happy.

• Protagonist Doug went veg on beloved sitcom King of Queens, but it didn't last long. Discuss with the hardcore fans (including a vegan or two) over at the Sony Pictures forums.
• The New York Times profiles happy veal and the "vegetarians" who eat it with a clear conscience. This is right up there with Rinella and his publisher.
• Slave lab(rad)ors Lucky and Flo find themselves on a hit list after sniffing out $3 million worth of pirated materials in Malaysia.
• "Canadian coastguards were last night battling to rescue hundreds of seal hunters trapped in thick ice off the country's Newfoundland east coast." Yeah, you read that right.
• And just plain weird[er]: stalkers and con-men at Liz Lovely [ed. note: article removed for further investigation! oooh]. Everything seems to be okay in the aftermath--s'long as they didn't get their grubby hands on the cookies...

Animal-friendly online retailer Downbound's Adam Wilson has launched a new site, 1 Month Challenge, where he and fellow vegan Kimberly Carroll (host of this TV show I haven't heard of) try to lose weight and build muscle in a one-month challenge. Their results will be posted May 5. As Ryan discusses over at Veg Blog, just 'cause you're vegan doesn't mean you're healthy: vegans can have high cholesterol, too. So watch those crispy nuggets, kids, but don't worry about the trans fats--those go straight to your arteries, not your thighs.

• Veg-friendly online dating as covered by Columbia J-School. Definitely not being discussed over at Vegan Porn--I wonder why.
• More than 3,000 pigs died when a Canadian hog farm caught fire last Saturday.
• Lewes, England farmers are protesting Mayor Merlin Milner, who recently snubbed the traditional menu for Lewes' "Town and Country" dinner (steak and kidney pudding), opting instead for a vegetarian meal.
• I don't want my food fried in tasty trans fats in this deep fryer--it's also an aquarium.
• An Arizona woman was found guilty of child abuse and could face up to 51 years in prison for starving her kids on a "vegan" diet of ground carrots.
• Brooklyn's own Red Bamboo wins Time Out's reader award for Best Vegetarian Restaurant, beating out HanGawi, Mana, Vegetarian Dim Sum House and SuperVegan reader favorite Wild Ginger.
• And this week's Vegan Job Watch: Organic Avenue seeks shop assistant, Counter seeks part-time server and mystery "established downtown vegan restaurant" seeks part-time office manager.