Right now, baby harp seals are being born on Canada's ice floes. The nursery that forms is considered by many to be one of the most amazing wildlife spectacles on earth. But the scene is short-lived. In just three weeks' time, the defenseless pups will be the target of the largest slaughter of marine mammals on earth—Canada's commercial seal kill.

Each year, Humane Society International documents the slaughter. What we see and film is devastating. Weeks-old seal pups are clubbed and shot to death, left wounded and suffering on the ice floes, choking on their own blood, impaled on metal hooks and dragged across the ice, even cut open while conscious.

Documentation of the slaughter. © Mark Glover/HSI

Europe's Role in the Suffering

The world is outraged by these scenes of cruelty, and most people are horrified to learn that Europe has played a pivotal role in the resumption of commercial sealing in Canada. There is little market for seal products in Canada because most Canadians oppose the slaughter, so the bulk of the seal skins are sent to Europe for processing and resale in fashion markets. This means that seals will die in Canada weeks from now because Europe continues to trade in their skins.

The Canadian sealing industry clearly states that a strong EU ban could spell the end of commercial seal slaughter in Canada. And history shows that when the EU prohibits trade in seal products, as it did for whitecoat seal pups in 1983, kill levels in Canada decline dramatically.

Impact of the Ban

Closing the EU market to seal products would remove a primary market for Canada's sealing industry, cut off trade routes to other markets, and end promotion of seal products in the influential European fashion markets. Ending EU trade in seal products would save millions of seals around the world from a horrible fate. 

That is exactly why pro-sealing nations and sealing industry representatives have lobbied the European Parliament heavily to derail the pending ban.

Shameless pandering to the cruel sealing industry should be stopped in its tracks. Europeans, their parliamentarians, and Member States all agree: only a strong ban on seal product trade will end the suffering of seals.