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On this day in vegan history · August 20, 2010

The EU Shuts Its Market to Seal Fur

After a decade of ice-floe protests and one lopsided vote in Strasbourg, Europe closed one of the world's biggest markets for seal fur, oil, and meat in a single stroke.

The EU Shuts Its Market to Seal Fur
Wikimedia Commons / Paul McCartney

The facts

Regulation
EC No 1007/2009, adopted by the European Parliament and Council on September 16, 2009
Parliament vote
550 to 49 in favor, May 5, 2009
Ban takes effect
Article 3 applies from August 20, 2010
Exception
Seal products from traditional Inuit and other indigenous subsistence hunts

On August 20, 2010, Article 3 of Regulation (EC) No 1007/2009 took effect, banning the placing of seal products on the European Union market. The European Parliament had passed the underlying law 550 to 49 on May 5, 2009, after years of campaigning against Canada's commercial seal hunt, including a widely covered 2006 trip to the Gulf of St. Lawrence ice floes by Paul McCartney and Heather Mills. The regulation carved out one narrow exception, for seal products from hunts that Inuit and other indigenous communities have traditionally conducted for their own subsistence. For the commercial sealing industry in Canada and Norway, the EU had been a major outlet, and losing it hit prices and demand hard.

In their words

The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.

  1. The hunting of seals has led to expressions of serious concerns by members of the public and governments sensitive to animal welfare considerations due to the pain, distress, fear and other forms of suffering which the killing and skinning of seals, as they are most frequently performed, cause to those animals.

    Recital 4, Regulation (EC) No 1007/2009

    Source: EUR-Lex

  2. I saw the aftermath of the cruel annual slaughter of seals first hand when I visited Canada as long ago as 1995. A ban is long overdue; this decision brings that possibility a step closer.

    Robert Evans, UK Labour MEP, reacting to the European Parliament's May 5, 2009 vote

    Source: All-Creatures.org

Why it still matters

Closing the EU market took away the sealing industry's biggest commercial buyer and gave animal-welfare advocates a durable precedent: a trade ban built on suffering, not scarcity, that survived a WTO challenge and still stands today.

Sources

This history is still being written.

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