Canada Wants to Subsidize an Expansion of the Sealing Industry and to Open Up a West Coast Sealing Industry
The East coast Canadian sealing industry survives because of millions of dollars in annual subsidies by the government of Canada. Now Canada wants to spend even more money to open up the trade in seal products.
It is a ridiculous effort doomed to failure. The commercial sealing industry is dead.
I've fought the Canadian seal hunt since 1974, leading numerous campaigns onto the ice to directly confront the sealers and participating in an international effort to undermine the market for seal products. It has been a long and successful campaign overall.
Regulation (EC) No 1007/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council on trade in seal products (the Basic Regulation
) prohibits the placing on the EU market of seal products.
The trade ban applies to seal products produced in the EU and to imported seal products.
The United States US banned seal products under Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972.
Mexico has banned import of all marine mammal products.
Russia and Ukraine were then left as the market for 95% of seal products channeled through a buyer in Norway, outside the EU. However, in 2011 Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan banned import of seal products.
In 2013, Taiwan, the fourth largest importer of seal oil, banned seal products.
In 2017, the Swiss banned import of commercially harvested seal products.
In 2018, India banned the import of seal products, the 35th major country to so so.
So that leaves China as the potential market expansion for seal products.
However, more than 50 Chinese environmental and animal rights groups have asked the Canadian government to stop the export of seal products to China, which they say are obtained by cruel and inhumane methods.
In the face of this what does the Canadian government expect to do to peddle their insanely inhumane industry to the world.
Canada also wants to start a sealing industry on the West coast/
A seal hunt on Canada’s West Coast would be in direct competition for markets with the existing harvest on the East Coast, a hunt that has been unable to sustain itself for decades.
The World Trade Organization has upheld the EU ban on seal products and has rejected Canada’s demand for access to market seal products.
Scotland just banned the killing of all seals. Seal watching in Scotland is estimated to generate $2.4 billion a year and employ 39,000 people in associated jobs.
That's where the money is Canada. Seal watching and not seal killing, and unless Canada adapts to seal watching it will continue to squander millions in tax dollars supporting the glorified welfare industry that sealing has become.