30th August 2006 updated 6th September 2006

Please lobby your Member of the European Parliament (MEP) to sign Written Declaration 38: a ban on seal products within the EU.

Bryan Meloy, a spokesperson for Gloucester Green party said: "By ending the trade in seal products from the commercial seal hunt in Canada, we can help stop this cruel hunt which killed more than 333,000 harp seals this year, 95% of which were less than three months old. So far South West MEPs Giles Chichester, Roger Knapman and Graham Booth have failed to sign. Please take a moment to email them online from the link below."

367 MEPs must sign the declaration before 6 September 2006 for this to pass, so please act now. By reducing the market for these unnecessary items, we can help to stop the cruel hunting of harp and hooded seal pups. In the past three years over one million seals have been killed in the Canadian commercial hunt, primarily for their fur. All vet reports document unacceptable levels of cruelty. The vast majority of British people (73%) are against this hunt. Over two-thirds of Canadians are against it as well.

Email those MEPs now from:

http://www.ifaw.org/ifaw/general/default.aspx?splash&oid=17831

See also most recent Glos Green party news release re seal hunting (March 2006)
 

Update: 6th September 2006

MEPs VOTE TO HALT SEAL SLAUGHTER

The European Parliament has adopted a proposal by South-East England’s Green Party Euro-MP Caroline Lucas designed to halt the annual slaughter of hundreds of thousands of seals in Canada and Russia.

Lucas, who  is also a Vice-President of the RSPCA, which awarded her its ‘Michael Kay Award’ earlier this year to mark an ‘outstanding contribution to European animal welfare’, co-sponsored a Written Declaration, along with four other parliamentary colleagues, calling for a ban on the import or sale of any products from hooded or harp seals.

Written Declarations are the European Parliament’s equivalent of an Early Day Motion in the UK House of Commons. They rarely receive the support of sufficient MEPs to become the parliament’s official policy – but with 373 signatures lodged the call for a seal  fur import ban has done so two weeks ahead of its parliamentary deadline.

Dr Lucas, also the Green Party’s Principal Speaker, said: “This is fantastic news, which brings us a significant step closer to ending the cruel and entirely unnecessary slaughter of hundreds of thousands of seals in Canada and Russia every year. I am delighted that a majority of MEPs from all political groups and EU member nations have agreed that this barbaric practice must be ended – and the onus is now on the European Commission to act immediately, as MEPs have demanded, before next year’s hunt.”

The declaration, which will be formally adopted later today (Wednesday, September 6th) calls for the European Commission to immediately ban the trade in seal body parts and products – a ban already adopted in Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, Croatia and the US, and under consideration by the Council of Europe.

Dr Lucas initially proposed the ban after it emerged that more than a million wild harp and hooded seals have been slaughtered in Canada in just the last three years – and over a hundred thousand seal pups have suffered a similar fate in Russia.

Dr Lucas said: “More than 20 years after the EU banned the import of fur products from the very youngest seal pups, hundreds of thousands of seals pups annually – most just a few weeks old – are clubbed on the ice floes or shot
from moving boats as they attempt to flee. Many are skinned alive. And every year there is public outrage when pictures of the hunt are broadcast around the world – but the most ‘telegenic’ pictures are taken near the end of the annual hunt, and the outrage comes too late for another generation of seals. Banning the import of all seal fur is the only guaranteed way of saving thousands of animals’ lives and showing the EU takes animal welfare and protection issues seriously.”

See also Caroline Lucas' news release from earlier this year on this website under News and 2nd March 2006.

Response from UKIP MEP:

I sympathise with the sentiments in Written Declaration 38 but I never sign Declarations of any sort on principle. This is because they achieve nothing and are used as a device to defuse public opinion and I deprecate that. I do however pursue issues such as this in other ways, for example through speeches in the European Parliament, questions, letters to British Ministers, press statements and any other useful way in which I can draw effective attention to the issues at stake. Best wishes, Roger Knapman MEP

Comment from Philip Booth: Roger Knapman was the former Tory MP for Stroud and is now leader of UKIP - I still can't get my head around UKIP policy of not engaging with parts of the parliament - they basically want it abolished so refuse to sign Written Declarations - it is true they can defuse public opinion but they are also a tangible public way that records an MEPs position - and with this one on seals the support helped the action - indeed signing them adds weight to the other ways of making these points like press statements. Anyhow this was good news and congratulations must go to all the organisations involved in putting the campaign together.