Word: seal
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Minister Stephen Harper met with E.U. leaders in Prague on May 6 for a summit to launch talks on a free trade agreement, they should have been exchanging handshakes and back slaps. Instead, they were straining to prevent their summit from being hijacked by an unlikely agitator: the baby seal...
...could the cute and fluffy creature cause so much trouble? On Tuesday, the day before the summit, the European Parliament passed a vote in Strasbourg to ban imports of seal products into the European Union - mainly from Canada. MEPs voted by a massive 550 to 49 to ban seal products - from soft pelts to Omega-3 health supplements made from seal oil - in time for the next commercial seal hunt season, in Spring 2010. (See pictures of life beneath Antarctic...
...Although the leaders spoke at the summit about how their pact would boost annual commerce between Canada and the E.U. by around $27 billion, they were also contemplating that the seal ban could lead to a major trade tiff. Canada has already promised to challenge the ban at the World Trade Organization - and stands a good chance of overturning it, since WTO rules only allow prohibitions based on health and safety...
...imports around $5 million of Canada's seal skins each year. But Canada says the impact of the impending ban is already being felt. Top seal pelts now fetch $14, a steep drop from the $105 they pulled in three years ago. And the Canadian hunt has killed less than 60,000 seals out of its 330,000 quota for 2009, down from over 220,000 last year...
...Many of the 6,000 fishermen in Newfoundland and Labrador are indigenous Inuit people, who hunt seals to supplement their incomes and say the ban threatens their livelihood. Before the vote, an Inuit delegation from Canada's northern Nunavut territory appealed to MEPs to reconsider the ban. The MEPs did amend the ban to exempt seal products coming from traditional Inuit hunts. But Inuit leaders warned it would still kill their market. "This exemption is nothing but a ruse," Nunavut Environment Minister Daniel Shewchuck said in a statement. "With an outright ban on commercial trade, the price of skins will...