Friday 20th August should have seen the ban on seal products into the European Union come into force. However things do seem a little bit confused at the moment as to whether the ban is legal or not. The difficulty seems to be that on Thursday an association of seal hunters who represent indigenous hunters released a ruling from the European General Court which stated that the ban had to be suspended.
The Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami organisation is leading the court battle to allow seal products from local huntsmen such as the Inuits to be able to sell their products in Europe. The court has decided to suspend the ban and given the European Commission until September 7th to provide evidence and arguments to support the ban of seal products. In total 16 organisations representing hunters, fur traders and native groups from Canada, Norway and Greenland are taking action against the European Commission because of the ban. The Canadian government are also claiming that the ban would be in breach of Free Trade regulations. The European Commission are claiming that the suspension of the ban only relates to the groups who won the court hearing while the hunters are claiming that the court decision suspends the ban on trade totally.
While the different organisations dispute how widespread the suspension of the ban is, one of the big questions that need to be asked of the court is why they decided to suspend the ban. The regulations that aim to ban the import of commercially killed seals into the EU have exemptions that allow for the continued import of seals killed by traditional hunters and indigenous people. The Inuits and other people who have a cultural history of hunting seals for their livelihoods would not have been greatly impacted by this action.
The annual seal hunt in Canada has support at the highest levels of Canadian politics and the legal challenge to the ban is almost certainly politically motivated and supported by the wider seal hunting industry. The decision of the European Commission to only suspend the ban to those who are involved in the legal challenge has not been taken lightly. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said at a news conference in Prince Edward Island on Friday that his government is disappointed with the EU interpretation of the court ruling. “We would urge them to respect the court decision,” he said. A ban on Canadian seal products “is the completely unfair and discriminatory treatment of a Canadian industry, an industry of people of modest means who work hard, who are being targeted by environmental extremists based on complete misinformation,” he said.
In reality because of the number of different groups and associations involved in the court case almost every major hunt organisation will be part of the court challenge and so exempted from the EU ban. The actual impacts of this though will be minimal as this years seal hunt is now over and with the full hearing set for September 7th it is likely that the appeal will be over before next years seal hunt. It’s unlikely that the appeal will allow for the removal of the ban, at most it will see some changes to the exemption for indigenous groups. Inuit originated seal imports to the EU is worth about 4 million Euros each year and make up about 1% of the total seal imports into Europe.
The seal industry seems to be going through a particularly hard time at the moment as fashions change especially in Europe. Fur, the most valuable part of the seal is not longer considered a fashionable item to wear and this has seen the value of seal pelts drop from a high of $100 each a few years ago to the current market price of about $14 a pelt. This means one of the most valuable parts of the seal now is the oil which is used in Omega 3 supplements. The value of the pelts have dropped so much that at this years hunt few hunters turned up and the value of the market has dropped so far that kills in the hunt this year fell far short of the allowable quota.
