Canada and Greenland faced off against animal rights groups on Wednesday over accusations their annual seal hunts are cruel, as EU lawmakers considered proposals that could bar their seal products in the EU.
The European parliament’s vote on such legislation could take place as early as April, when the Canadian seal hunt gets under way.
The measure needs the approval of all 27 EU member states to become law.
The EU executive commission’s proposed ban targets countries that practice “cruel hunting methods.”
The law would only allow the import of seal products from countries that can guarantee their hunting practices are “consistent with high animal-welfare standards” and that the animals are killed without undue suffering. Special exemptions would also be allowed for Canada’s and Greenland’s Inuit communities.
Rebecca Aldworth, from the Canadian branch of the International Humane Society, showed lawmakers videos of bloodied seal pups being clubbed and skinned in Canadian waters, sometimes when they were still alive.
“You have before you a historic opportunity to save millions of animals from a fate you can’t imagine. Please stand up and do the right thing,” she told a hearing on the bill at the EU’s assembly.
Greenland Fisheries Minister Finn Karlsen, dressed in a traditional white Inuit sealskin jacket, insisted such a ban would “have severe and negative consequence for hunters and their families.”
“Our culture and our economy are at stake and it’s something I cannot accept,” he told lawmakers.
Canadian fisheries ministry representative Garry Stenson said the hunt “is humane, well regulated and sustainable” and that new rules for the hunt were under review to strengthen inspections, monitoring and enforcement of animal welfare rules.
Canada has said a ban could violate trade rules and it threatened action if a ban was introduced. It said a ban would decimate isolated east coast communities that are heavily dependent on the annual hunt.
Canada’s East Coast seal hunt is the largest of its kind in the world, with an average annual kill of about 300,000 harp seals.
British lawmaker Diana Wallis, who is drafting the EU assembly bill, suggested tough labeling rules were the only way to ensure sealing countries Canada, Greenland, Finland, Sweden and others adhere to EU animal welfare rules.
The EU proposal recommends a certificate and labels be provided by countries exporting seal products making clear seal products they trade meet strict EU conditions.
Several EU nations, such as the Netherlands and Belgium, already have their own bans on all seal products. The US has banned Canadian seal products since 1972.
Canada’s largest markets for seal products, such as Russia, China and Norway, are outside the EU. But sealing industry experts fear a ban would curb the demand for sealskins from the fashion industry and disrupt shipping routes.
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
FREEDOM NO MORE: Today, protests in Macau are just a memory after Beijing launched measures over the past few years that chilled free speech A decade ago, the elegant cobblestone streets of Macau’s Tap Seac Square were jam-packed with people clamouring for change and government accountability — the high-water mark for the former Portuguese colony’s political awakening. Now as Macau prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of its handover to China tomorrow, the territory’s democracy movement is all but over and the protests of 2014 no more than a memory. “Macau’s civil society is relatively docile and obedient, that’s the truth,” said Au Kam-san (歐錦新), 67, a schoolteacher who became one of Macau’s longest-serving pro-democracy legislators. “But if that were totally true, we wouldn’t
Two US Navy pilots were shot down yesterday over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the US military said, marking the most serious incident to threaten troops in over a year of US targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Both pilots were recovered alive after ejecting from their stricken aircraft, with one sustaining minor injuries. However, the shootdown underlines just how dangerous the Red Sea corridor has become over the ongoing attacks on shipping by the Iranian-backed Houthis despite US and European military coalitions patrolling the area. The US military had conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels at the
MILITANTS TARGETED: The US said its forces had killed an IS leader in Deir Ezzor, as it increased its activities in the region following al-Assad’s overthrow Washington is scrapping a long-standing reward for the arrest of Syria’s new leader, a senior US diplomat said on Friday following “positive messages” from a first meeting that included a promise to fight terrorism. Barbara Leaf, Washington’s top diplomat for the Middle East, made the comments after her meeting with Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus — the first formal mission to Syria’s capital by US diplomats since the early days of Syria’s civil war. The lightning offensive that toppled former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on Dec. 8 was led by the Muslim Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in al-Qaeda’s
RSS