EU court rejects Inuit bid to challenge seal ban
Artist, Trevor Blackstock
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Tell Canada to End Its Shameful Seal Slaughter
From CTV News
A court ruling in Europe has struck another blow to Canada’s embattled seal products industry.
The European General Court, in a judgment released Wednesday, rejected a bid by Canada’s largest Inuit organization to challenge the European Union’s year-old trade ban on seal products.
The court in Luxembourg dismissed the group’s case, saying the challenge from the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, several seal hunters and industry organizations was inadmissible.
Even though the EU ban exempts the trade in seal products from aboriginal groups, the Inuit say their markets will plummet along with the rest of the commercial industry unless the ban is overturned.
A spokesman for the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, which represents Canada’s 53,000 Inuit, said the group would comment on the ruling at a later date.
Rebecca Aldworth, executive director of the Canadian wing of Humane Society International, said the ruling “puts another nail in the coffin” of the commercial sealing industry.
“It’s a very important ruling,” she said in an interview from Strasbourg, France. “The ban remains in place and seals in Canada and around the world are going to be spared a horrible fate for many years to come.”
Aldworth said her group would like to see the industry mothballed and all seal hunters offered compensation.
Animal welfare groups have long argued that the annual hunt off the East Coast has left a stain on Canada’s international reputation because they believe the slaughter is inhumane.
“It’s time that the Canadian government recognize that the writing is on the wall,” said Aldworth, a Newfoundlander who has observed the hunt for more than a decade. “The commercial seal hunt is a dying industry.”
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In June, as the hunt drew to a close for another year, federal officials confirmed this season was one of the worst since the early 1990s, when the industry struggled to recover from a European ban on white pelts from young harp seals.
The total number of harp seals killed in the 2011 commercial slaughter was about 38,000 — less than 10 per cent of the total allowable catch.
The EU ban was blamed for pushing down pelt prices to between $20 and $30 — barely enough for seal hunters to cover the cost of fuel and insurance for their boats.
Still, the Canadian government is moving ahead with its own bid to challenge the ban through the World Trade Organization.
As well, the executive director of the Fur Institute of Canada, Rob Cahill, says the fight to save the industry will continue on another front.
He said the group that initially challenged the ban is disappointed with the latest ruling, but it is pursuing another court challenge aimed at the EU legislation that implements the ban.
As well, Cahill said some additional plaintiffs have joined the group’s cause, including a Scottish manufacturer of sealskin sporrans, the traditional pouch worn with the Scottish kilt.
“He’s found the restrictions are affecting his business in a big way,” Cahill said.
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for those who hunt me because i am a seal
did you ever stop to think just how i feel
i just want to sit on my rocks and ice
if you would leave me be, that would be so nice
my fur is mine, not yours for the taking
just look at all the red blood you are making
go back to your homes, your families, your wives
and leave us seals alone to enjoy our lives
Karen Lyons Kalmenson
Our Compass 
EVOLVE!!!! Long live the Seals!!
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for those who hunt me because i am a seal
did you ever stop to think just how i feel
i just want to sit on my rocks and ice
if you would leave me be, that would be so nice
my fur is mine, not yours for the taking
just look at all the red blood you are making
go back to your homes, your families, your wives
and leave us seals alone to enjoy our lives
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Its a pity that believers in animal rights do not believe in human babies rights!
A young couple had their manslaughter convictions upheld, their baby weighed 3.5 pounds at 10 weeks when sadly it died. They had been feeding it on soya milk and orange juice, they would not use baby formulae because it contains animal products. To get milk in general a calf must die you see. Animal rights excludes exploiting animal or killing them for any reason. This belief although noble if thought threw sends humans back 30,000 year in evolution, back to the Garden of Eden, but not a land of milk and honey, not milk anyway.
Your author has obviously swallowed the Animal Rights Propaganda from Animal Rights Groups without questioning its correctness. In fact the seals are killed more humanely than animals in the slaughter house. Unless you want human babies whose mothers can’t nurse to die, then you require milk products. The calves who will die in order that the cow lactates will unfortunately suffer a worse death than the seal.
So do you want milk for baby formulae, or do you want babies dying of malnourishment? If you want milk you are not an animal rights believer.
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1. Breastfeeding is considered the most nutritious form of food for infants and delivers antibiotic therapies to them as well: I breastfed my child, who is now vegan. The unfortunate illustration above is based on what – your ability to cross issues and manipulate a human tragedy to support animal suffering? Great job, but we see it in all its pathetic glory all the time.
2. Soy-based infant powders and liquid are available. Surely you are aware of lactose-intolerance.
3. Hitler, Pol Pot, and Stalin all ate meat, are you disturbed AT ALL at their actions?
5. Eden, such a perfect world where no animal flesh or secretions were consumed.
6. Killing is fundamentally wrong. If you think otherwise, you must get thrilled anytime some human tragedy occurs.
7. It seems the misinformed is, sadly, you; these topics have been covered numerous times on this very site, but you’d prefer to spout off thinking you had such compelling arguments, you leaped without looking.
Bye now.
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My father gave me a very good but simple philosophy when I was a little boy. “Never harm anything or anybody without a good reason, if you have a reason to destroy something do it efficiently but don’t enjoy doing it”. For this reason I only fish if I will eat what I catch, I will leave a caterpillar alone unless its eating my cabbage in which case I will quickly kill it. This philosophy is so superior to the animal rights philosophy.
It really starts with Genesis, every one remembers “be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the earth”, but it continues “and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth”.
The idea of man having dominion over the animals is not accepted by animal rights believers. According to the animal rights concept, mankind’s access to the benefits of nature is restricted to plants and minerals. The animal
rights philosophy does not allow for human beings to exploit animals or to kill them – whatever the purpose might be.
This philosophy is based on the idea that animals have “inherent value as the experiencing subjects of life” and that all who have the inherent value, have it equally – whether they be “human animals” or not.
A noble philosophy but deeply flawed when it comes to practicals. For instance if your child required a new heart valve, at the moment you would have the choice of a cow or a pig valve. Would you let your child die, or would you have the implant knowing an animal died to provide it? Most people value human life above animal life, personally I would take suicidal risks to rescue a child if the need ever arose, I have put myself in imminent danger for an adult, but an animal I will only rescue on a low risk basis.
If you read your children fairy stories, you might come to the bit where granny gets eaten by the big bad wolf, in an animal rights world this is a possibility. Paul Watson in his book Earth Force recomends a human population of 25 million to share the earth’s resources equitably with the animals. Even Pol Pot, Stalin and Hitler between them only managed to kill about 40 million, the Animal Rights want to kill 7 billion, and they don’t eat meat.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.
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