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She said the criticism is coming mostly from Europe. The restaurant briefly took down its own Facebook page after being deluged with nasty messages, including a death threat. “It is really a small minority with a lot of power,” she said of the critics. The threat, which was reported to provincial police, was, “We’re going to kill you with baseball bats like you kill baby seals.”

On the rights group’s Facebook page, commenters denounced the restaurateurs as monsters and idiots. “Ashamed to be of their race,” one woman wrote. “This woman fought for the baby seals and they dare use her name,” another said in reference to Ms. Bardot. After Côté Est closed its Facebook page, the activists took to Trip Advisor to post negative reviews.

What Ms. Morency finds most frustrating is the lack of understanding of the seal hunt among the animal-rights “extremists.” For one thing, the hunting of seal pups has been outlawed since 1987. For another, the seals are far from endangered, with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans reporting the east-coast population at its highest level in more than 30 years.

“The real debate is that there is a resource that is over-abundant at this time, and yet it is not accepted that this resource be exploited in a healthy, respectful way,” Ms. Morency said. “Eating seal meat is a way to participate in the solution to this over-population. The seals are going to be killed anyway, all the better if they are eaten.”