Norway and Canada have appealed a WTO ruling that supported an EU ban on the import and sale of seal products.

The WTO ruled in November that while objections by Norway and Canada to the 2010 EU ban had some merit, it was outweighed by concerns about seal welfare.

Arguments by Norway and Canada insisted that their seal hunting methods were humane and no worse than commercial deer hunting methods used throughout the EU. The WTO countered that most EU residents favored the ban and that killing methods like using a club with a metal spike to stun seals before killing them is cruel.

Both countries said hunting is a time-honored method for fishing communities to earn income and manage fish stocks.

The Norwegians and Canadians called the ban discriminatory because seal products from EU members Sweden and Finland are not banned.

Hard times for Inuit

Greenland’s Inuit population is exempt from the ban, but they say it has ruined the market for their seal products too. Danish lawmakers have said they will keep the pressure on the EU to ensure that Europe keeps its market open to Greenlandic sealskin.

“Most people know that we support a sustainable seal hunt in Greenland,” Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the Danish PM, said in an interview late last year “We always have, and we’ve been at the forefront when the discussion has come up in the EU.”

A WTO decision last year cast doubt on whether the EU’s Inuit exemption was legal. The exemption permits products that come from seals hunted by Inuit, but the WTO concluded the rule was discriminatory and that there was no way to control whether seals had been killed by subsistence hunters.

According to biologists, there are 12 million seals living in Greenlandic waters. Hunters kill as many as 200,000 a year. Most of the meat is used as food, and about half of the hides are used locally for clothing. Last November, both the WWF and Greenpeace came out in favor of Greenland’s seal hunt, which they labeled as sustainable. Exports of sealskin from Greenland have fallen from 60 million to 6 million since 2006, and Tønnes Berthelsen, a spokesperson for Greenland’s Professional Hunting and Fishing Organisation (KNAPK) said that families in Greenland are suffering.

“These are not huge commercial enterprises,” said Berthelsen. “These are families that can no longer sustain themselves.”

Berthelsen said hunters know they have an uphill battle against what he called a “professional propaganda campaign” against seal hunting. He said that grisly images of snow stained with seal blood do not reflect the reality of Greenlandic hunters who shoot a small number of mature seals every year.

“Those pictures are not from Greenland,” said Berthelsen.

Source: Arctic Journal