Seal hunters hit back over trade attack

The Canadian government and seal hunt representatives have stepped up a campaign to convince EU policymakers to give up plans to ban the import of seal products from Canada.

A Canadian sealing delegation has spent the last two weeks meeting with EU governments representatives to argue against a ban, following calls for a moratorium from the European Parliament, which raised interest from Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas.

Dutch politicians last week refused to meet the delegation. The Netherlands is developing a national ban on seal products.

The delegation says that the EU must not be misled by false information and emotional campaigns into ending a 3,000-year old tradition.

Canada’s annual east-coast seal hunt opens this week with a government-approved quota of 270,000 harp seals to be killed. Seal hunt advocates are also hoping to kill off interest in banning the export of seal products to the EU, Canada’s largest market for goods including seal pelts and nutritional supplements.

The Canadian seal population has risen from 2 million in the 1970s to between 5.5 and 6 million today. Trevor Taylor, minister of fisheries and aquaculture for Newfoundland and Labrador, said that this showed the seal was in no danger of extinction.

"Any logical debate about the seal hunt," said Taylor, "would have to conclude it’s sustainable, would have to conclude it’s humane, and would have to conclude it meets strict scientific standards."

"Opposition is based on emotional rhetoric," he said. "It victimises people and societies involved in the hunt."

Anti-sealing campaigns often use images of wide-eyed young whitecoat seals to stir emotions, said Taylor, despite the fact that killing seal pups has been illegal for 20 years.

Loyola Sullivan, ambassador for fisheries conservation, said that Canada was being unfairly discriminated against. "I would like to see this compared to the humanity of any other hunt or abattoir: it would come top," he said.

Dimas says that he would favour a ban on imports of seal products and is looking for the appropriate legal base - an EU treaty article that allows the EU to introduce such a ban. "This is not about the preservation of the species, since the population has gone up," said Dimas’s spokeswoman. "It is an animal welfare issue. We are investigating whether or not that provides sufficient legal grounds for action."

But Mark Small, a Newfoundland sealer, said that, following the depletion of key fish stocks in Newfoundland waters, he had only seal to harvest. An EU ban would see his family’s income fall from 25,000 Canadian dollars (€16,000) to C$5,000 (€3,200). He accused Europeans of putting animal welfare above human rights. "The hunt is not cruel: there is another cruelty here," said the 60-year-old sealer. "My people are an endangered species, not the seals."

The seal delegation accuses conservation groups of exploiting the seal hunt for their own fundraising purposes. "I think you will find IFAW [the International Fund for Animal Welfare] raises far more in donations on the back of this hunt than the value of the seals hunted," said Taylor. 2005 figures put the landed value of the seal hunt at €10 million.

IFAW was founded in 1969 by a small group of citizens opposed to the commercial hunting of seal pups on the eastern coast of Canada. It is now an international environmental movement running campaigns to protect animals including whales, bears and elephants, as well as seals.

Gaia Angelini, campaign officer for IFAW, said that the group raised €67m in 2006, the majority from supporter contributions.

"We do not campaign against the seal hunt because we want to raise money," she said, "but a lot of people who give us money would like to see an end to the seal hunt."

IFAW last month published research suggesting that Canadian seal populations were falling because of global warming. "This is not for the moment really a conservation issue," said Günther Pauls of IFAW. "It is a cruelty issue, but [the climate evidence shows] it could easily become a conservation issue."

Pauls rejected Canadian government claims that some communities rely on the seal hunt for 40% of their income. "We just don’t buy that," he said. "This is a small scale hunt for a few days of the year. Canada should end the seal hunt and invest in local, sustainable industries."

The environment group says that only 4,860 of the seals to be culled this year are reserved for the Inuit population. "This remains a commercial hunt; it is not an aboriginal hunt," according to an IFAW statement.

The Canadian government and seal hunt representatives have stepped up a campaign to convince EU policymakers to give up plans to ban the import of seal products from Canada.