EU Seal Trade Regulation needs to be celebrated, not evaluated

On 15 May 2024, the European Commission launched a public consultation to evaluate the EU Seal Trade Regulation, which was first enacted in 2009. This inconspicuous announcement reads as follows:

'This initiative will assess if the rules in place remain fit for purpose, focusing on their socio-economic impact and their impact on seal populations.'

For some, this short sentence might not raise any alarm bells, but for us at IFAW, it does.

IFAW has been fighting to end the atrocities of the Canadian seal slaughter since 1969, when Brian Davies first founded our organisation. Our first major victory came in 1982, when Europe voted in favour of a ban on the import of whitecoat harp seal and blueback hooded seal skins.

But it didn't end there, and after many years of uphill battles that we managed to win, our advocacy work was eventually solidified in the greatest victory for animal welfare of all time: The World Trade Organisation confirmed in its final judgment in 2014 that animal welfare concerns are a legitimate reason to restrict trade and that the EU is justified in banning the import and sale of products from cruel seal hunting.

The current initiative announced by the European Commission could be compared to a routine servicing of one's car-checking tire pressure, changing oil, and replacing fluids-and when undertaking such servicing, you would do these checks to see if your car still runs according to its purpose: to bring you by road from A to Z.

In this case, the Commission aims to assess if the EU Seal Trade Regulation still functions according to its purpose. So, let's remind ourselves of the Regulation's original goals.

Regulation 1007/2009, better known as the EU Seal Trade Regulation, includes as its objective 'the elimination of obstacles to the functioning of the internal market by harmonising national bans concerning the trade in seal products at [the] Community level'. When the EU issued its seal product ban in 2009 to harmonise trade rules across the EU, several countries across Europe had already banned the trade in products from commercial seal hunts, including Belgium and the Netherlands.

Another purpose of the Seal Trade Regulation was to address the concerns of citizens and consumers about the animal welfare aspects of killing and skinning seals and the possible presence on the market of products obtained from animals killed and skinned in a cruel way. EU citizens no longer wanted to see products from an inherently cruel commercial seal hunt ending up in shops across the EU.