The weakness in marketing the whole animal is the meat. We did a meat subsidy that began in about 1995 and finished off in 1999. We found that they were taking mainly big adult seals. The pelt was actually getting wasted because it has less value. We were propping up markets that didn't exist. Meat did end up being destroyed anyway, and it was very costly. Those were years when a lot of hooded seals were taken because they don't have good pelts, which are all bitten and ravaged by fighting. We ended up scaling back the meat subsidy and going back to what was primarily a fur hunt.
One of the things people think is that there's a lot of meat wasted. We learned from the meat subsidy that the beater seal--the stage where most of the pelts come from, and when animals are taken in Canada--has about 12 pounds of marketable meat on it. That's hard to fish off. It's not worth their while, and it takes up room in the boat. So all we could do was encourage them to land it.
That's where we're at now. We encourage people to land it, but is it worthwhile? Is it a lot of waste, or is it better to let the scavengers have it? We've been leaving that for the boat captains, primarily, hoping that markets for meat would come along. But there really aren't a lot of markets--just local domestic stuff for flippers, or choice steaks occasionally, and bits of meat.