Posted May 23, 2014
On Thursday, the World Trade Organization (WTO) appeals panel upheld the European Union’s ban on seal furs, meat, blubber, and other products, which could prompt other animal welfare measures affecting the global trading systems, according to a Politico article in by Adam Behsudi available here. The Wall Street Journal also published an article available here, and the Canadian Press published an article available here.
The annual clubbing and shooting of hundreds and thousands of seals has prompted the justification of the 4 year-old ban by the European Union. The decision of the WTO supporting the EU law could establish guidelines for a country defending a trade measure by utilizing public morality.
Canada and Norway criticized the bill, arguing that upholding the public morals justification would set a dangerous precedent and open a “floodgate” of similar animal welfare issues.
“When you do that, then you’re in danger of all the other industries being banned in the same way,” Terry Audla, President of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, an association representing more than 50,000 Inuits, told The Canadian Press. “I mean, who’s to say what’s more cruel? Industrialized agriculture? The poultry, pork and beef industry?”
However, a justification of the measures with a “very strong body of evidence that the measure improves public morals,” Aldworth said, will be required by those seeking to place bans on animal products or institute other trade restrictions.
Rob Howse, a WTO legal expert and law professor at New York University, called “the floodgate theory a red herring.” The initial seal case decision was thorough and primarily applied to the conditions of the seal hunt, he said.
Seal hunts in the unpredictable environment of arctic ice flows “pose various risks to the welfare of seals, including the risks of ineffective stunning, delays in the killing process, struck and lost seals, and the hooking of unconscious seals,” says the WTO’s findings.
The decision on the seal ban was the first time the WTO upheld an animal welfare law on moral grounds, although member countries have invoked the exception to defend their trade practices.
“The real question is if the measure is necessary to protect public morals,” Howse said. “The WTO would cease legitimacy very fast if it told countries what they could or could not regulate under public morals.”
For more information on animal welfare, please visit the National Agricultural Law Center’s website here.
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