The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) has been waging a war for quite some time now with the seal hunting industry. The Canadian Government insists that the seal hunt is an animal production industry like any others, while animal activists says the levels of suffering present here most than in any other industry cannot be tolerated. According to independent studies 79% of the sealers involved in the study did not check to see if an animal was dead before skinning it. Furthermore, in 40% of the cases, the sealhad had to be struck a second time, because it was still conscious after the first blow. Almost half of the seals were conscious when skinned.