Seal hunters face battle with EU over trade

Carl Mortished, World Business Editor

Hunters in Canada and Greenland are challenging a European Union regulation banning the import of seal products. Aboriginal people in northern Canada and Greenland fear that the EU law will destroy the trade in seal pelts, remove a vital source of income for families and force Arctic communities to live off handouts.
Adopted in response to pressure from animal rights activists, the law prohibits the import of seal products, including meat and pelts, into the EU.
Auctions at Copenhagen are a leading trading centre for fur and Inuit hunters had been earning 300-500 Danish kroner (£35-£60) for each seal pelt. But the new law, which came into effect in September, caused the price to collapse and two Inuit organisations — Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, of Canada, and Inuit Circumpolar Council, in Greenland — are challenging it even though it includes an exemption “for traditional hunting by indigenous communities which contribute to their subsistence”.
The prohibition is suspended until July while the European Commission seeks to define the scope of “traditional hunting”. Inuit groups have expressed dismay over the attempt by civil servants in Brussels to regulate their way of life.

Aqqaluk Lynge, president of Inuit Circumpolar Council in Greenland, said that EU officials wanted the Inuit to live as they did 300 years ago. “They want to decide what kind of traditional hunting we do and who should be allowed to eat seal meat.”
Mary Simon, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, said that the ban was at odds with the EU’s tolerance of factory farming. “It is bitterly ironic that the EU ... seeks to preach some kind of selective morality to Inuit. At best this is cultural bias, although it could be described in harsher terms.”
Michaëlle Jean, Governor General of Canada, recently joined the controversy over the seal ban. In a gesture widely seen as a challenge to European anti-fur activists, Ms Jean, who was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, took part in an Inuit ceremony, cut up a seal and ate its heart, pronouncing the meat “good, like sushi”.
The governments of Norway and Canada have already launched legal challenges to the EU regulation at the World Trade Organisation (WTO), where trade experts are expecting Brussels to become embroiled in a political row that will set the anti-fur trade lobby into conflict with supporters of the rights of aboriginal people.
The Commission accepts that seal populations are not at risk and has acknowleged that legislators are responding to vigorous campaigning by anti-fur trade groups.
Mr Lynge said that, without income from hunting, Inuit communities would have to live off state handouts. “It is a very harsh measure that will hit small communities dependent on hunting to put food on the table,” he said. “They are listening to lobbyists that don’t care about people. We live on the edge of survival. That is how we have lived for a thousand years. We don’t have the money that the extremist animal rights groups have.”
The ban is expected to encounter legal difficulties at the WTO, where the EU will be forced to defend its prohibition under Article 20 of the 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades (GATT), which defines the exceptions under which a state can hinder trade. These include conservation measures, but, because seal populations have been increasing, the main defence by Brussels is likely to be the exception in the GATT treaty relating to “protection of public morals”.
Public morality is rarely invoked in trade disputes. Most recently it was rejected by the WTO in a case where China sought to justify local control of the distribution of imported audiovisual material on such grounds.
Eastern promise
Canada is courting China as an alternative market for seal products after the European Union’s ban. Gail Shea, the Canadian Fisheries Minister, recently attended Beijing’s International Leather and Fur Show, hoping to expand the market for seal oil and seal meat, as well as fur.