Last year, the German Parliament voted unanimously on a motion urging the government to ban seal products. A governmental proposal for a permanent ban is awaited. Italy introduced in 2005 a temporary ban on seal products. In October 2006, the European Parliament adopted another resolution on the Animal Welfare Action Plan which calls for an EU wide ban on seal products. The Resolution asks the European Commission to produce a legislative proposal for a seal ban. In December 2005, the Dutch Parliament iniciated a legislative proposal to ban the import, export and all marketing of harp and hooded seals and their derived products. Seals are hunted when they are few days older and their pelts can be legally traded in the EU, which happens to be one of the largest market for seal products. Unfortunately, this ban is not effective in order to stop the current trade of harp and hooded seal pelts in Europe. The European Union introduced in 1983 a ban on seal products derived from whitecoats (newborn harp seals, less than 12 days old) and bluebacks (young hooded seals, less than one year old). The European Parliament has passed a motion banning the import of seal products and sets as a larger goal an EU-wide ban (That is where we need to press the issue now!), and if possible make it for all seal products, including from Namibia, Russia, Norway and Greenland. The US in 1972, followed by Mexico (both through a Marine Mammal Protection Act, which prohibits the import/export and marketing of all marine mammal products), and Croatia in 2006. The USA, Mexico and Croatia have banned the trade in seal products. Holland was the second country in July 18th, 2007.ĮU countries (Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, UK and Italy), have already taken steps to ban the trade in seal products. We need your help to save our Canadian baby seals!īelgium was the first EU country to place a ban in all seal products on the 25th January 2007. That kind of international pressure it’s the key we need to stop this atrocity.įrom Canada nothing can be achieved, and that is a hard lesson we animal welfare activists in Canada have learnt with the unmoral decision of the DFO this year to go ahead with the seal hunt, despite knowing that over a quarter million baby harp seals had already perished a couple of weeks before. This slaughter will happen until the EP, more European countries and other countries worldwide, ban all Canadian seal products (even if they don’t get/use those products). There were not enough seals to reach their original quota.
This year, the seal hunt ended up with 215,388 seals slaughtered, according to the DFO statistics. Next year, in 2008, another seal massacre will happen next spring in the North of Quebec, New Foundland, Labrador and Prince Edward Island.
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The ice floes wasn’t strong enough to support the weight of a baby seal a couple of weeks old, so it would break and throw the cub seals to the frozen water.ĭespite this tragedy and the pleas of international organizations and people worldwide, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), decided to go ahead with the seal hunt starting of April the 2nd 2007, but reduced their quota from 325,000 harp seals to 270,000, plus 8,200 hooded seals and 9,000 grey seals! This year during the spring, due to Global Warming, 260,000 baby harp seals drowned. Mostly are baby harp seals and they are killed only for their fur, of which 80% ends up in Norway, to be sold mostly to Russia and China. With the new quota, this turned out to be the largest marine mammal slaughter in the world.Ī 98% of the seals killed are between 14 days and 12 weeks old. Up to then, about 60,000 were clubbed every year, shoot or killed with a “hagapik” (harpoon).
In 2003, the Canadian government announced that they would be killing for the next three years, one million baby harp seals (plus grey and hooded seals). There is a EU movement to ban Canadian Seal products.