Reports are that Canada has filed a complaint against the EU over the Dutch and Belgian bans on seal products (which currently or soon will outlaw the manufacture and commercialization of all products containing seal) and perhaps the Italian and Luxembourg regulations which refuse to grant import licenses to seal products.The bans apparently stem from both the manner in which seals are traditionally killed – by clubbing – and from a decline in the seal population dating from the 1980s.
By contrast, Canada - which foreshadowed this move in a late-July press release - claims that over two-thirds of non-Inuit hunting occurs not by clubbing but by guns (there is also an Inuit exception to the Belgian law). Moreover, the seal population, while declining in the early 1980s, has apparently recovered (and in fact grown by more than three times in the last twenty years).
I am unfamiliar with the exact nature of the claim at this stage, but Francois Jubinville, a spokesman for Canada's minister of international trade, indicated the nature of Canada’s compliant when stating: ‘These bans have no basis in scientific fact … We don't believe there is any basis from the point of view of science or conservation to justify banning imports of seal products.’
