Inuit call for rethink of seal-ban proposal

A article very interesting.


Canadian Press
ST. JOHN'S -- A council representing Inuit from Canada, Russia, Alaska and Greenland has warned European legislators that a renewed push to ban seal products could devastate native communities.
Some members of the European Parliament say the annual seal hunt in Canada is cruel and unsustainable and they've passed a nonbinding declaration calling for a ban on imports of seal products. It will be up to the European Commission to determine whether it becomes law.
Meanwhile, the German parliament unanimously endorsed an import ban the day after the Inuit Circumpolar Council, which represents 150,000 Inuit living in the Arctic, sent a letter asking legislators to rethink their position.
"The proposed legislation would hurt our Inuit economy, our Inuit culture, and our Inuit spirituality in unimaginable ways," council chairwoman Patricia Cochran said in a letter dated Oct. 18.
The letter goes on to say the European decision to exempt Inuit products from the proposed seal product ban simply won't work.
The 1983 European ban on products produced from young, whitecoat harp seals wreaked havoc on self-sufficient Inuit, she noted in the letter, sent to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and EU Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner Markos Kyprianou.
She invited legislators to visit before proceeding.
"Inuit base their hunt, all hunts, on the principle of sustainable use, not on the principle of subjective 'public decency' as some European governments seem to be doing," she wrote.