A group representing Nordic hunters says it is more optimistic than ever that the European Union will lift a long-standing ban on the trade in seal products.

The regulations, implemented in 2009 after a highly successful campaign by animal rights groups, deprived Canadian seal hunters of their main market.

“Our hope and expectation is that the ban will be lifted and trade will be possible again,” said Johan Svalby, senior advisor for international affairs at the Nordic Hunters Alliance.

Last May, the European Commission launched a formal review of the ban, called a “fitness check”.

While the commission regularly reviews its regulations, “we feel this time that the commission is taking seriously its initiative to examine the consequences of the ban,” Svalby said.

Growing concerns in the Baltic region

The review process is taking place as a growing number of EU countries bordering the Baltic Sea raise concerns about the effect the region’s growing seal population could have on fish stocks.

Last month, Sweden sent the commission a letter asking the 27-member bloc to relax its rules on trade in seal products, given that management of the region’s seal population relies on hunters who currently have no market for their meat and pelts.

“There has been a sharp increase in these species in the Baltic Sea, which endangers the recovery of some important fish stocks for coastal fishing,” Peter Kullgren, Sweden’s Minister of Rural Affairs, said at the meeting. a meeting of the European Union of Agriculture and Agriculture. fisheries ministers in Luxembourg on October 21.

Finland, Estonia and Latvia support the Swedish proposal to manage gray and ringed seals. All four countries are concerned about fish eaten by predators in the Baltic and the damage they cause to fishing equipment.

“There are a lot of angry fishermen around here,” Jouni Heinikoski, a former hunter and fisherman from northern Finland, said earlier this year. “With the seal population so high these days, gillnets can no longer be used and salmon traps have to be made of special nylon.”

Ethical dilemma

Sven-Gunnar Lunneryd, a researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, said some scientists believe rebuilding fish stocks in the Baltic depends on killing large numbers of seals.

“We have to decrease them and someone is going to decrease them, it’s the hunters,” he told CBC News in July. “It’s not an easy task… There must be economic compensation for hunters.”

Svalby, of the Nordic Hunters Alliance, said that although seal quotas are much lower in Europe than in Canada, “we fill about half of the quotas we have in Sweden and Finland.”

Lunneryd added that allowing seal hunting while banning the sale of seal products goes against sustainable hunting practices.

“Should I throw the dead seals into the sea? No, it’s completely unethical,” he said.

Thousands of people participate in consultations

Since the review of current regulations began, thousands of people and organizations have participated in consultations, including the governments of Canada, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories , who argued for removing the ban.

Animal rights groups also participated, several of which, including the Humane Society International, support maintaining the ban and have called the seal hunt a “brutal massacre” and “cruel” in their arguments.

“Canada clearly has a cynical intent to undermine the ban and restore market access for its cruel products,” Jo Swabe, director of public affairs for the Humane Society, wrote in a June editorial.

“The commission should leave this legislation unchanged, not only because commercial seal hunting poses an existential threat to seal populations vulnerable to climate change, but also – as the WTO has recognized – because it poses to all respects an affront to public morality.”

Swabe declined an interview, as did Canada’s ambassador to the EU, Ailish Campbell.

Commission report expected in January

“The concerns expressed during these consultations will be duly taken into account,” promised European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Janusz Wojciechowski during the Luxembourg ministerial meetings on October 21.

But he added that culling seals would not be a panacea for the Baltic’s fishing problems.

“The depletion of fishing in the Baltic Sea is to a large extent due to the poor environmental state of the Baltic Sea, which clearly affects the profitability of fishing,” Wojciechowski said, adding that the lack of oxygen in the region and increasing water pollution were among the “pressures that must be addressed first.”

“Predator control alone will not bring these serious problems under control,” he said.

Oceana, a non-governmental organization that campaigns for the protection of marine ecosystems, told the Brussels-based news site Euractiv last month that the depletion of fish stocks was the result of “decades of overfishing, pollution and other human activities that have degraded the Baltic Sea ecosystem. “

A recent A University of Gothenburg study has also raised questions about current levels of seal hunting in Sweden and their long-term sustainability.

The commission will publish a report containing the findings of its review in January.

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