What price the ban on leghold traps?

Date: 04/01/1996

The Canadians are pleased, naturally enough, that the European Commission did an eleventh-hour U-turn on leghold traps, but animal welfare groups and MEPs are now growling about legal action over what they see as an illegal reversal of policy already agreed by the European Parliament and EU ministers.

The apparent motive for the about-face is simply that, in the absence of internationally-recognised standards for fur-trapping, an EU ban on animal pelts caught in the leghold traps would be pretty ineffective and, crucially, open to challenge under World Trade Organisation rules as an illegal protectionist measure.

But, mutter the animal rights people darkly, there was more to it than that. They want to know what importance the Commission attached, for instance, to muttered Canadian threats to ban the import of 13 models of European-produced cars in retaliation for a ban on the export of the pelts of 13 species of wild animals whose fate was sealed by a form of trap already outlawed in 60 countries.