We Were Left With No Reasonable Alternative

After unsuccessful lobbying attempts aimed at convincing the European Union to see reason and not give in to the demands of anti-sealing activist groups Inuit have launched a law suit in the European General Court seeking to have Regulation (EC) No 1007/2009 of the European Parliament and Council on trade in seal products overturned.

The law, passed September 16, 2009, bans importing seal products into European Union countries based not on good science but emotional appeals from anti-sealing groups; and while those who support the legislation like to point out the "Inuit exemption" contained within it Inuit are well aware of how ineffective this because we've been there before. The European seal bans of the 1980's also contained Inuit exemptions and our local economies were still devastated, and already the current seal products ban has resulted in a sharp drop in seal pelt prices - the exemptions did not work in the 80's, and they will not work now.

Inuit have been hunting seals and by doing so sustaining ourselves with food, clothing, and trade, for many generations. No objective or fair minded person can conclude that seals are under any genuine conservation threat, or that Inuit hunting activities are somehow less humane than those practiced by hunting communities all over the world, including hunters in Europe.

It is ironic beyond belief that the European Union, which seems entirely at home with raising and slaughtering animals in highly industrialized conditions, and embracing a sport where animals are repeatedly and painfully speared in arenas for the entertainment of local crowds, seeks to preach some kind of selective elevated morality to Inuit. Although it could easily be described in harsher terms the ban represents, at best, a significant cultural bias.

The lawsuit Inuit have launched is separate from the Government of Canada challenge filed under World Trade Organization rules that was joined last November by Norway, our lawsuit does not detract from that challenge and we continue to support the government in their challenge.

Obviously we would have preferred that our earlier interventions in this matter had resulted in a different outcome however that did not happen, and the choices Inuit are currently faced with are either to accept the decisions of others regarding our culture and our practices, or to use every tool at our disposal to defend them - we choose the latter.

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