Staff Reports Walnut – The Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 (MMPA) prohibits the hunting, killing, capture or harassment of any marine mammal, or the attempt at such, and enacts a moratorium on the import, export and sale of any marine mammal, part or product in the United States. But this protection didn’t keep a Walnut couple from allegedly selling millions of capsules of seal oil and other illegal products from 2007 until 2010. According to Harpseals.org, Lin Liang and Denian Fu, a married couple from Walnut, were indicted by a Federal Grand Jury on Thursday, October 3, with eight counts of smuggling seal oil from China, and selling it as a nutritional supplement via mail order in the U.S., China and Vietnam. They face fines of more than $1 million and five years in prison. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a federal agency focused on the conditions of the oceans and atmosphere, and helping to improve our stewardship of the environment, was responsible for bringing an end to the illegal import and export transactions of the Walnut-based Nu-Health Products, after a lengthy investigation. Liang and Fu are also reportedly charged with falsifying documents, labels, and customs declarations, and the importation and falsification of lamb placenta, honey bee royal jelly and propolis products. Harp seals, indigenous to the eastern Canadian seaboard, are the victims of the largest slaughter of marine mammals in the world. Mainly killed for their pelts, their oil is also used as a supplement with deceptively marketed health benefits. Due to the high levels of toxins in their blubber coming from the food they ingest (which can be high in heavy metal, PCB, and DDT), their oil benefits are often falsified as omega-3 supplements . There are as many marketing lures for the oil as there are warnings of toxicity. More than 90,000 harp seal pups were killed this year in Canada alone. They are shot or bludgeoned to death for products that are illegal under MMPA. To find out how you can help put an end to this tragedy worldwide, visit http://www.harpseals.org for more information.