Bourdain Slams Chefs for Seals Redux

In a lengthy, mostly MMA-centric interview with Eater sister site SB Nation, Anthony Bourdain answers a Chefs for Seals question with yet another salvo in support of Canada's seafood industry.

If you find the seal hunt repellent, don't buy seal products. Demonstrate against them, or whatever. People of conscience can have different opinions. What I do object to here, is a bunch of cynical activists convinced a bunch of well-meaning chefs to boycott the entire Canadian seafood industry. A seal isn't even seafood. By putting pressure on the many, they extorted from the few. I just thought it was in extraordinarily poor taste.

Look, these are people who live far from the situation. I just think there was a lot of dishonesty and misrepresentation in the process. I saw good-hearted chefs being used to ill purpose. I think there's plenty of room for honest people to disagree on this issue, I just really didn't like the way it was done. I'm not an advocate for seal hunting, but I'm definitely against the cynical use of my former colleagues to extort honest fishermen who have absolutely nothing to do with the issue, especially when it's done by people that are far away from the situation. If these numbnuts want to stop some animal cruelty, let them go after the Colonel.

· Meet the Bourdains [SB Nation]
· All Chefs for Seals Coverage [-EMTL-]