Recent news that the European Commission will forge ahead with implementation of a seal product import ban in the EU, despite the ruling of the European General Court, has again brought attention to this absurd law.
The regressiveness of the measure is betrayed by tepid support it received even from those who voted in favour. Diana Wallis, rapporteur for the bill said on voting yes to the bill:
"The most difficult aspect of all of this has been the place in it of the Arctic traditional communities – the indigenous people of the Arctic. We say we have an exception for them, but how will being associated with a banned product actually affect their lifestyle and their economy? The Arctic is not some sort of theme park or museum: it is a living, breathing community with its own modern economy and at the heart of that is what is taken from the seas. I hope that those communities will be able to continue to exist in the way that they always have. But I have my doubts..."
And yet she voted yes knowing full well the effect the ban would have, apparently in a transparent pander to the baser instincts of the electorate mere weeks before the 2009 European parliament election.
It hardly needs to be repeated, but the scale of the seal hunt is absolutely dwarfed by the high volume slaughter of other animals around the globe, and indeed inside the European Union. Obviously, the main difference is that most of those animals are killed inside, far from the probing glare of photographers. A few figures to put it into perspective:
In the EU27 member states in 2008, hundreds of millions of animals were slaughtered to produce:
11,129,819 tonnes of chicken
21,291,898 tonnes of pig
8,077,338 tonnes of cattle
(Source:Eurostat)
By my crude calculations that is over 2 BILLION chickens, approaching 200 million pigs, and several million cows. The entire global hunt for seals totals around a half million animals. It is absolutely insignificant in comparison, and doesn't bring with it the myriad of ethical, economic, and environmental concerns that large scale industrial agriculture does.
The EU's position is, in essence, that is is impossible to enforce a humane seal hunt because it is conducted in the wild, despite the conclusion of reputable studies that a properly regulated seal hunt is humane, and that much of the opposition is " based largely on emotion." (http://www.ivwgonline.org/) However, it has been amply demonstrated that modern factory farming processes are far from humane, and come with a host of social, economic and environmental problems, even in Europe which does admittedly have far better animal rights standards than the rest of the world.
But, as of today imports of animals raised in desperately over-crowded and unpleasant conditions are fine with the EU, as long as they are from these "normal" farm animals that we don't get to see being killed.
The fact is that the vast majority of seals live lives freely in the wild, are hunted by economically marginalised groups, are part of a relatively sustainable ecosystem, are very healthy to eat, and form part of a sustainable way of eating and living, unlike the vast majority of animals raised in the industrial food chain. Hunting wild seals represents a far more humane way of supplying our desire for meat than almost anything else we do. That European politicians supposedly motivated by concerns over animal welfare and the environment would choose to target this animal and the people who make a living off of it is painfully ironic.
