EU Votes to Ban Seal Products
by JANET SONG
Great news for animal welfare advocates: The European Union has voted, 550-49, on a trade ban against seal products. The ban includes fur, meat, organs and oil derived from the annual slaughter of approximately 300,000 Canadian seals.
Animal activists have been lobbying long and hard against the Canadian seal hunt, continuously putting forth graphic images of helpless baby seals being hacked to death with hakapiks (spiked clubs) and sometimes stripped alive while their mothers wailed in anguish nearby.
In spite of years of loud public protest from around the world, the Canadian government’s only concession to “more humane” methods of slaughter was to switch from hakapiks, to plain clubs and rifles.
The EU trade ban does allow exceptions for small-scale hunts to manage seal populations, and exempts Inuit communities, who can continue their traditional hunts but are barred from large-scale trading in Europe.
The Canadian government has, not surprisingly, vowed to challenge the ban in an appeal to the World Trade Organization. In response to the threat Rebecca Aldworth, director of the Humane Society International Canada, reasonably suggested that Ottawa should develop a seal license buyout package, and consider investing dollars that would be used for expensive trade lawyers, in economic alternatives for sealers instead.
Image by mikebaird, flickr
- Posted by Causecast
Related causes: Animals
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