European Commission acts on seals at WTO

Posted on 21/12/2012

Eurogroup for Animals welcomes the good work of the European Commission following the publication today of its first written submission to the WTO, responding to Canadian and Norwegian challenges of the EU ban filed on September 2012.

The document, which relays EU citizen’s concerns on animal welfare, is consistent with Regulation (EC) No 1007/2009 on trade in seal products, given the difficulty to assess the suffering caused to each seal killed by the Canadian and Norwegian commercial hunt.

As a next step, a panel in charge of the case is likely to submit a report to the Dispute Settlement Body of the WTO in September or October 2013. We hope that measures prohibiting importations and marketing of seals products will be definitively recognised by the WTO.

More information on the European Commission’s written submission can be found at the link below.

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