We encourage you to write to the European Union (EU) to oppose them lifting their ban on the importation of products taken from harp or hooded seals. These seal products can include pelts, meat, or oil derived from seal fat or blubber. The seals can legally be killed once they start to lose their natal hair, which happens around the time they are weaned, at about two weeks of age.
The U.S. banned import of all such products over half a century ago. The EU imposed their ban just on harp and hooded seal products in 1983, since extended to include all seals, but with an exception for those killed as part of a “subsistence” hunt by Indigenous people. As we have explained elsewhere (see links below), egregious claims are made by the federal government as it seeks to garner votes from Canada’s east coast.
The link to the feedback page is as follows: Give your feedback on: Trade in seal products – fitness check of EU rules (europa.eu)
Talking points can be:
• As a Canadian I support the conservation of our native wildlife.
• Both harp and hooded seals must have broad areas of sea ice in the Atlantic region where they can give birth. That ice is increasingly absent, especially in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, one of two major locations for the seals, and recently recognized as the fastest warming region in the Northwest Atlantic.
• A new and more sophisticated method of estimating seal population sizes estimated there were millions fewer harp seals than the Canadian government claims.
• Seals, like dolphins and porpoises and also sharks, tuna and other large fish, are apex predators necessary for the health of oceanic ecosystems and all are facing significantly increasing survival risks, with many species or populations in serious decline.
• The Canadian government recently increased the fishing quota on codfish while claiming seals are eating them all, and in spite of scientists seeing no indication of an increase in cod in recent years, and also unable to either blame or exonerate seals for the failure of the cod population to increase.
• The seal hunt is a highly contentious issue, in Canada and worldwide and removing the ban would again lead to civil divisiveness.
• Most wildlife, and especially predatory animals, are overall in decline and putting market value on them equals putting a bounty on them, and now is not the time to do that. Seals are an integral part of the ecological whole of north polar waters under unprecedented decline. We must protect them.
This is the submission on behalf of Animal Alliance of Canada:
This is the submission on behalf of the Animal Protection Party of Canada:
With thanks,
Barry Kent MacKay
