Unclear in Policy and Legal Context; Became Too Political
The ban on the importation of seal products into the European Union (EU) was nothing more than a political play aimed at showing the public the animal-loving credentials of their elected representatives, a Finland university researcher says.
Nicholas Sellheim, who holds a Ph.D in Law from the University of Lapland in Finland’s northern city of Rovaniemi and a Masters in polar law, said his research shows that although the EU seal regime is said to be based on objective scientific knowledge, it is in fact based on “an inherently biased approach toward the non-indigenous seal hunts” such as that on the east coast of Canada.
Sellheim’s dissertation is titled Legislating the blind spot. EU seal regime and the Newfoundland seal hunt.
In the document, Sellheim screens the EU’s legislative process regarding the seal regime. He states it became obvious during his research that the claim of a European “moral concern” is ambiguous although the EU successfully defended the regime under the moral exception clause in international trade law. Despite this, Sellheim said the seal regime cannot be linked to other EU animal welfare laws as the regime does not have an impact on animal welfare in the seals hunts.
“It’s a ban with a very unclear policy context, as well as legal context. And the moral component, to argue on a moral basis, was only inserted later on and was not part of the initial debate,” Sellheim said in an interview. “And so they were basing their entire argument, as well in the end their legislation, on information that is not based on empirical and scientific data.
“You can really see that in the beginning they had these ideas, and then comes all the drafting process with scientific studies and so on, but the final piece of legislation is, in essence, the codified narratives they used in the very beginning. And it is purely emotional, nothing else. I mean everybody knows it, but I think I’ve shown that it is really like that, that there is no empirical basis to draw from. And that is the problem in my opinion, that we are now not only talking about the seal hunt piece, but in other contexts the same methods being used.”
Sellheim said that because the seal hunt does not directly affect people in Europe, it was an easy way for politicians to show the public that they care about animal welfare and collect votes. He said the debate of the legislation in the European Parliament took place in 2009 prior to parliamentary elections.
It was also in 2009, the European Parliament first adopted the regulation banning the trade in seal products in the EU. The ban was amended in 2015 in order to reflect the outcomes of World Trade Organization rulings following legal challenges from Canada and Norway. The regulation does provide for an Inuit exception.
“There is no commercial seal hunting going on in the European Union — there are other types of seal hunting going on but not to make money — and that is something that makes the seal hunt rather easy to be used (for vote getting) and because it has already been exposed to such major opposition over the last decades and so,” Sellheim said. “In that sense it makes the seal hunt unique.”
Sellheim said that by implementing the ban, thus eliminating the main market for Canada’s east coast seal industry, the European Union failed to recognize the socio-economic and cultural value of the hunt for the people involved in it.
“This dissertation shows how closely interlinked the seal hunt at sea is with the social fabric on land. Indeed, a lack of knowledge, on conditions in the sealing industry existed prior to the seal regime’s adoption although its impacts were expected to be drastic,” Sellheim wrote in the paper’s abstract. “In spite of this gap in knowledge the regime was adopted.”
Sellheim’s field research for the dissertation involved travelling to Newfoundland and rolling up his sleeves to work in the sealing industry — both on the water at the hunt and in a seal processing facility.
“I looked into the way this EU ban was drafted and what kind of arguments were used, what narratives were being applied and where these narratives come from and what kind of empirical knowledge exists, and if and how this knowledge is being utilized,” he said.
“Also, to substantiate my claim that there is virtually no scientific unbiased research on that, I had to do my own research. I said, OK, if I want to write about the seal hunt and all of the narratives and so on, I have to know what I’m talking about. That’s when I started the process of getting on a boat.
“The point of the whole research I’ve been conducting is not to focus on the animals, but the people. Because, in my opinion, the whole debate about seal hunting focuses exclusively on the animal and never on the people. Although in the Inuit context it does, but never in the non-Inuit context. For me this kind of distinction doesn’t exist — legally of course it does — but from a social justice perspective it shouldn’t exist.”
In April 2013, Sellheim boarded a sealing boat out of the small community of Woodstock on Newfoundland’s Baie Verte Peninsula as one of a seven-member crew. He spent about two weeks at the hunt and learned how seals where killed, pelted and handled before being shipped off to the processor.
Later, he spent time as a participant-observer at the Carino processing plant in South Dildo salting, stretching and curing pelts.
Most of all, noted Sellheim, he got to know the people involved in the industry and how the ban and the animal welfare campaigns that targeted the sealing industry have impacted their communities.
He said the whole experience was “life-changing.”
“It took me one and half years to prepare for that trip because I didn’t have any contacts in Newfoundland. As a European, a German for that matter, I didn’t know how to go about getting on a sealing boat,” he said.
“I had been reading a lot about it and about the conditions and so on, but nothing really prepares you for it. It was a 45-foot boat and being in the ice was pretty intense and all the hunting going on. I was actually engaged in the work as a deckhand.”
In addition to the field work in Newfoundland, Sellheim interviewed and spoke with EU parliamentarians and reviewed documents and parliamentary debates leading to the imposition of the ban.
He said the whole experience has opened up his eyes on so many levels.
“With the seal hunt, it’s something I find so incredibly misrepresented here in the European Union, and really all over the place,” Sellheim said. “But when you start talking to people here — it doesn’t really matter where people come from — the first reaction is always the cute baby seals. Once you really start talking to people about the hunt, they start to say ‘oh yeah, I never really thought about that’ and then it is not as stabbing as one might think.
“I realized there is a huge, gigantic gap in knowledge and everyone seems to know something about the seal hunt, but there is no peer-reviewed or no scientific research about the seal hunt, neither legally nor anthropologically,” he said. “There is one anthropology study from the 1980s and so it is not up to date anymore. I then realized I wanted to write my Ph.D. about it and that’s what I did.
“The focus for me is not the animal, but the people, and to see how — now we are talking about the seal hunt, not the processing — what the seal hunt does as a means of glue in the community is pretty extraordinary I think. And how people approach it and how the hunters deal with difficult situations, what kind of solidarity is triggered through the hunt for seals and also the hostile environment. The incredibly uncomfortable and unpleasant killing that also the hunters themselves don’t like, and on the other hand it’s part of their annual income, so it’s a part of life there. That, along with the seal processing experience, gave me the much more depth of argument. I can now say now, for example, they just don’t do it for fun. I can say the killing occurs in a very quick manner and I have it all on video and written about it. It’s an element of social cohesion. It contributes to social cohesion in these little communities, not only in the hunting communities but also in the processing sector.”
Sellheim has been presenting his findings at various scientific conferences in many different countries and said the reaction has been positive.
He said he has not been back to Canada, or specifically Newfoundland, to speak about his findings but would love the opportunity to do so.
“I am in the process of writing a book on the seal hunt worldwide and the social-legal implications of it,” he said. “And I would love to continue my research, not just into the seal hunt, but also the fishing industry there in Newfoundland.”
