The premier of Canada's majority-Inuit territory, Nunavut, in the far north of the country, has travelled to Brussels in a last-ditch attempt to protect his people's livelihood and culture and convince the European Union not to ban seal products.
As part of a delegation of Canadian sealers and senior politicians, Paul Okalik, the Inuit head of the northwestern Canadian region, whose government contains no political parties and operates on the basis of consensus, is worried that the European Commission is just months away from enacting a Europe-wide ban, a move that he says will have a devastating effect on his already impoverished community.
"Seal meat has been an important part of our diet since time immemorial," he said. "Before the arrival of the Europeans, we used the hides as clothing. Since then, we've traded them."
"In discussions [in Europe] about a ban on seal products, there are always nice words for the Inuit, but these are just words. The impact will be the same."
The Inuit leader, along with the rest of the Canadian delegation, met senior EU environment officials on Tuesday and Wednesday (2 April).
Meanwhile, last week saw the launch of the annual Canadian seal hunt, some 25 years after the EU first adopted legislation to ban the import of products from baby seals.
British Green MEP Caroline Lucas used the occasion to call on environment commissioner Stavros Dimas to quickly bring forward a proposal on a comprehensive ban on all seal products before next year's Canadian seal hunt.
"The existing legislation on seal imports is simply ineffective," she said. "Imports continue to enter the EU. An estimated 275,000 seal pups are due to be slaughtered over the coming weeks in Canada, and thousands more will be killed later this year in Russia and Namibia."
'Rifles, not clubs'
Mr Okalik however insisted the hunt is humane. "Traditional Inuit laws demand we take care of animals. Historically, we used the harpoon, but after the Europeans' arrival, we began to use rifles. This allows the animal to die immediately and not suffer."
His fellow leader, Loyola Sullivan, the Conservative premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, also part of the delegation said he came to support his province's fishing communities, many of whose families depend on sealing for part of their livelihood. He too argued the hunt was not cruel, saying that 90 percent of sealing is performed by rifles, and the hakipik, a type of club, is as humane as killing methods used in slaughterhouses.
Mr Sullivan also said that new rules were being introduced to ensure that the seals are dead before they are skinned.
Animal rights campaigners, however, say that despite improvements, the conditions that sealers operate under – moving ice, high winds, rough seas and freezing temperatures – make it difficult to execute a humane kill.
Sheryl Fink, a seal hunt observer with the International Fund for Animal Welfare [IFAW], the leading anti-seal campaign group, said: "Unfortunately, I think this year's hunt will be ‘business as usual' here in Canada. I don't expect to see any improvement in the way animals are killed, or in the way this hunt is monitored."
The Newfoundland premier argued that environmental groups use a non-endangered but visually arresting species to campaign around as it is a very effective method of fundraising.
In 2006, some 425 MEPs signed a statement calling for a ban on seal products across the EU, while excluding from such a ban traditional Inuit seal hunting, the biggest petition ever to be signed by euro-deputies.
Mr Okalik explained that shortly after the MEP's statement was issued, although it had no legal clout, the effect was still disastrous: "Although the Inuit were told that we could continue to trade, the market collapsed nonetheless."
Beyond the Netherlands, in the last two years, motions on the hunt, decrees or bans have come into effect in Belgium, Italy, Germany, Austria, and France. Spain is currently considering legislation and the UK parliament has urged an EU-wide import ban.
Yves Lecocq, a veterinarian with the Federation of Associations for Hunting and Conservation of the EU (FACE), a pro-hunting group, said that the EU has no legal competence to legislate on the welfare of wild animals.
However, the Canadians worry that a series of bans at the member-state level would give commissioner Dimas the legal basis to harmonise EU sealing legislation, a move that could mean an EU-wide ban.
Commission officials say they want to support "sustainable hunting", but are concerned that the seal population may be disappearing faster than has been predicted as a result of climate change, and they want to ascertain clarity on the seal population figures, the numbers killed and the killing methods.