BURLINGTON, Ont. - Federal Fisheries Minister Gail Shea says getting a pie in the face Monday from a woman opposed to the East Coast seal hunt only strengthens her resolve to defend it.

"If this is what it takes to defend the Canadian seal hunt, then I'm very proud to do it," Shea told the Charlottetown Guardian after the incident in Burlington, Ont.

Emily McCoy, 37, of New York City was taken into custody and charged with assault.

Shea was delivering a speech at the Canada Centre for Inland Waters when a woman stood up and pushed a tofu cream pie squarely into the minister's face.

"Shame on you Gail Shea. ... It is a shame on Canada. It is a shame that she has not denounced this bloody seal hunt," the woman yelled before being led away by officials.

Shea said the bright lights from the television cameras prevented her from seeing the woman coming toward her.

"I could kind of see something was coming in front of the lights, but I couldn't tell what it was until I got it right in the face," she said. "I didn't know what was happening until I actually got the pie in the face."

The animal-rights group PETA later took responsibility for the incident. It said in a release that it was part of its campaign "to stop the government's ill-advised sanction of the slaughter of seals."

Shea, who represents a P.E.I. riding, didn't require medical attention and returned to the podium after wiping the pie from her face.

While not injured, Shea said she does considered it assault with a weapon. She said the woman could have had something much more dangerous than a pie in her hand.

"You just deal with so many people. You can't know that everybody that we come across is rational," she said.

Politicians have often been targets for demonstrators wielding pies, some of whom went to jail.

Former prime minister Jean Chretien was hit in the face with a pie by a protester in Prince Edward Island in 2000. His attacker initially was given jail time but eventually received a conditional sentence.

A woman who missed Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach with a pie at the annual Calgary Stampede breakfast in 2007, and hit a security official instead, was sentenced to 30 days in jail.

So was a woman who threw a pie at Calgary Mayor Dave Bronconnier in the summer of 2007.

In 2003, a protester who hit then-Alberta premier Ralph Klein in the face with a pie at the Stampede breakfast was convicted of assault and ordered to serve a 30-day intermittent jail sentence.

Jean Charest got it in April 2003, two days before his Liberals ousted the Parti Quebecois and he was elected Quebec premier.