TORONTO (AP) — Canada's annual seal hunt will start at the end of the week and hunters will be employing a more humane way of killing them, the government said Tuesday, but animal-rights activists condemned the planned killing as inhumane.

Phil Jenkins, a spokesman for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, said the hunt would begin Friday if weather permits.

Jenkins said new rules have been implemented to ensure that seals are dead before they are skinned. Hunters will be required to sever the arteries under a seal's flippers, he said.

"That is now a new condition of a sealing license," Jenkins said. "We're just trying to make sure there is no possible way that a seal could be skinned while it was irreversibly unconscious but not dead. It's really going an extra distance to make sure that it's humane as it can be."

Animal rights groups said they still opposed the hunt.

"They've added bleeding to the killing process," said Rebecca Aldworth, director of Canadian wildlife issues for the Humane Society of the United States. "This won't change anything."

This year's total allowable catch has been set at 275,000 seals, up from 270,000 last year. The total allowable catch was 335,000 two years ago, but poor ice conditions led to the change last year.

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