The bloody war of words and bullets related to harp seal hunting has once again ignited. This week marks the start of the 2014 seal season in Canada. Designers at Versace, Prada and Gucci are licking their lips in anticipation of the freshest fur.

Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) has allotted 400,000 young seal for this year’s harvesting. Those numbers are almost always attached to the DFO’s findings that there are currently 4.7 million seals on the ice floes off Newfoundland and within the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, a zone known as The…