My basic allegation is that the animal welfare groups which have pushed this regulation through are not primarily interested in minimizing animal suffering. They are out to kill the fur trade. The regulation itself, when it showed up on the EU agenda, appeared to be animal welfare oriented, but in the course of 1994, also the EU Commission began to lean toward a fur ban as the real objective. However, once the world trade implications became clear, and the EU Commission trade people started showing an operative interest in this matter, focus changed back to the original intention of the ministers in 1991.
The indigenous people affected are the trappers in Canada, Alaska and Siberia. They have important stakes in the future viability of the fur trade. They risk to wind up in the same situation as the Inuit of Canada and Greenland, as they were affected by the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act in the US and the 1983 seal skin ban in the EEC. At that time, a dramatic rise in social break-down and suicide rates were observed, and has in many ways been shown to be directly linked to the collapse of the seal skin market.
When that effect became public knowledge, and members of the European Parliament went to Greenland in order to verify the matter for themselves, they declared that that kind of thing must never happen again. Yet, this is precisely what is happening.
The underlying conflict, of course, is the tension between the concepts for and against, respectively, the very concept of a sustainable use of nature's resources. Parallel to what one might call an anti-use-of-wild-animals trend in European public opinion, an opposite development has taken place on a higher level. In 1992 Rio de Janeiro, ministerial-level international
agreements were approved which clearly endorsed the general trend established by the Brundtland Commission and the two editions of the World Conservation Strategy formulated by the World Conserva-tion Union, the World Wide Fund for Nature and the United Nations Environment Programme: that of sustainable development.
The underlying philosophy here is that nature's resources may be harvested as long as no species are threatened, and nature is left to operate with a reasonable balance of its own. The issue of non-cruel harvesting methods is identified as a valid concern, and is to be dealt with in the various cultural contexts in which it occurs. The indigenous peoples of the world are asked to make their voices heard, and the dominant societies are called upon to listen to them. In fact, for the first time in history, a ministerial-level international conference recognizes that indigenous peoples are entitled to co-decison in matters that touch upon their vital interests. That is specifically set down in the Principle 22 of the Rio Declaration.
A number of animal welfare issues are affected here. Inside the EU - as indeed everywhere else in the world - such matters are dealt with in counterbalance with the socio-economic necessities imposed by society. That is abundantly clear when talking about farmed animals and pest control. Leaving aside the question of how veal meat is produced here in Holland, there is good reason to take a look at the one million muskrats that are drowned every year in various types of traps in order to protect the dikes. The Dutch position in the ongoing negotiations has all the time been that methods used in pest control should be exempt from the trap standards which EU, US, Canada and Russia are trying to agree upon, the argument being that the killing of
all those animals every year is a necessity if Dutch people shall be allowed to live where Dutch people have always lived, and want to live.
The same largesse, however, is not extended by the Dutch to the trappers of the tundra, for whom also it is a necessity to kill fur animals if they shall be allowed to live where they have always lived, and want to live in the future. Trapping methods in Europe are viewed in the light of the socio-economic cir-cum-stances, but Europeans will not allow the trappers of the North to protect their way of life.
What can be said of this other than that it is unethical to demand greater sacrifices by other people than you are ready to ask of yourself.
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When coming from the Arctic and visiting this country - and Europe in general, or the US for that matter - one of the most striking things you observe is the ever-present importance of private ownership.
No private ownership of the land exists in Greenland, or in the North West Territories of Canada or the endless Siberia where the Russian Arctic in-digenous peoples live. Communal, collective
access to the land is the basis for all indigenous cultures in that part of the world - as it is for land claims and land rights.
The effective defense of these rights is the basis for -
2) the preservation of nature and wildlife, where these people live.
Take away their right to the land, rivers, lakes, ice and sea, and the white man's world will move in. Some years ago, German and Canadian enterprises planned what was to be the world's biggest uranium mine in Keewatin, N.W.T., the traditional land of the Caribou Inuit. The plans were dropped, among other things because of the land claims of the Inuit. A uranium mine would have brought development, meaning airfields, roads, car traffic, pollution, building activities, noise etc. etc. etc., and the wildlife would have paid the price. Eventually, the caribou herds would have been disrupted. So would the Inuit way of life, which depends on just those caribou herds.
Further back in time, we had the Arctic Pilot Project, where oil and gas companies planned a massive traffic of ice-breaking supertankers through the seal, whale and walrus hunting fields of the Inuit of the Eastern Canadian Arctic and Greenland. It met a head-strong resistance from Inuit everywhere, and it never did materialize.
What we in the Arctic feel about the fur ban, so ardently sought
by some people in Europe, is that here we are once more facing the same old story - subtler means, same effect: they impede the land use, and that in time will erode the land right. Result: in time, industrialization will spread, people will lose their culture, and! - the land will lose its life.
Every culture has its economics. You deny those economics, you kill the culture. In this case, it's a way of life that upholds wildlife by using it. Is killing that kind of culture an objective for sustainable development?
A fur ban is harmful! That is point one on the agenda. And please don't come and tell us about derogations or exemptions for indigenous peoples. We know how that works. I am using a seal skin vest myself today. We all know how people in the streets
would react if they realized that I am wearing seal skin, the skin of a dead animal, mind you! I don't know of one single European environmental campaign-maker south of the Danish border who has ever told the public about the Inuit-friendly exemption of the European seal skin ban, and that they can proudly wear an Inuit produced seal skin coat from Greenland or Canada.
The fact of the matter is that the real skin of a real animal from God's own nature is infinitely more environment-friendly
than that loathesome product called fake fur. The production of fake fur is one of the most polluting chemical processes in existence, and the long-distance effects of the by-products,
especially the particle dissemination of organo-chlorines is now a deadly serious and mounting threat against all biological life in the Arctic. When you wear that kind of fur imitation, you take part in a destruc-tive proces aimed not only at seals, whales and polar bears, foxes and wolves, but also against the people who have lived off and together with these animals for millenia.
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I have some trap specimens with me here, one from Belgium, one from Denmark and one from Canada.
This big, toothed Belgian leghold trap is a really nasty one. I bought it a few months ago in a hardware store on Place Jourdain in Brussels, seven minutes' walk from the European Parliament. The retailer had never heard that leghold traps are forbidden on EU-territory as of January 1st, 1996. In fact, steel-jawed leghold traps are forbidden in Belgium, but a closer look at the situation reveals that this ban is only enforceable on public lands. In Belgium, 90% of the land is privately owned. On their own lands, people can do what they want, and in actual fact, all kinds of old, cruel devices are in use all over Belgium. Nobody seems to care, not even the animal welfare organizations. At any rate, they don't make any noise about it.
The second one here is a standard mole trap of a kind which any child can buy in the hardware stores of Denmark. It is toothed,
and designed to smash the neck, head and shoulders of that half-blind, gentle little furbearer. The trap is meant to be pushed
down in the ground, and its functioning can easily be impeded by gravel and dirt, in which case probability is that it grips the snout and eye-region of the animal. This instrument would be pro-hibited in Canada on ground of inhumaneness, but it is perfectly legal in Denmark, as indeed it is under EU-legislation, existing and planned. Does anybody here prefer to be gripped by the snout rather than by the leg?
Thirdly, I also have with me a standard, state-of-the-art Canadian padded leghold trap. In dr. Nollkaemper's paper on the "Legality of Moral Crusades" it is said about the Canadian leghold trap the "the jaws cut deep in the flesh and may break bones in the limb" (p.240). Well, we'll see:
(At this point, I let my hand walk on the fingertips into the trap and set it off).
Look, here I am, trapped. The jaws don't cut into my flesh, and there is no danger that my fingerbones be broken. Yet, I am fixed and cannot pull myself loose. This is a good trap. If the animal caught belongs to a non-target species, it can be released, physically unharmed.
Trapper education is important! ... for the animals, that is.
Example: like the soft-catch, the Swedish leghold snare - which is perfectly accepted in the EU - produces no physical injury,
but stress, certainly, if the animal cannot take shelter after having been trapped. And don't think that a cage trap is any
better! That depends on the species you want to catch. A marten or a wild mink will go crazy of stress in a few hours' time in a cage trap which appears to the animal to be open. Place a few fir branches on top of the cage, however, and the animal calms down. Providing the trapped animal with the feeling that it sits in a shelter does wonders, like making it possible for the trapped animal to drag the leghold (snare or trap) into a hide-away in the bush. Professional trappers know that kind of thing, but many others don't. How would they.
In the video that Mr. Vingerling showed us at the beginning of this symposium, I noticed two things: first, as far as I could see, none of the traps utilized were soft-catch types. And secondly, most of the animals were unable to take shelter. Under the circumstances, they were obviously madly in need of just that. The traps were of a kind that none of us want to use, and they were badly set.
The leghold snare is in use in the EU. Why doesn't the European Union have a program for trapper education, making sure, among other things, that people know how to alleviate animal stress? After all, this type of animal welfare issue has now been on the agenda for many years. Why hasn't the Eurogroup for Animal Welfare worked out a proposal for requirements for a trapper's license in the EU?
I'll tell you why: because the real agenda in the original thrust behind this proces is not an animal welfare one. True enough,
all those hundreds of thousands of grass roots supporters of the drive against the leghold trap are certainly motivated by animal welfare concerns, honest and good and sensitive people as most of them are. But not the campaign architects. From the beginning, their real objective has been to have a ban on fur imports, not to engage in the hard work of actually improving conditions for the animals trapped, monitoring the 15 different sets of national legislation on this matter, and setting up programs to alleviate the pain and stress felt by those millions of animals that are being trapped all over Europe all the time anyway, and will continue to be trapped.
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The situation as of now: The EU Council may very well reject the agreement proposal in a few months time. Then what?
Many people think that the result will be as follows: we will get an effective ban on furs from Canada, Russia and the US. Inside the EU, the steel-jawed leghold trap, whether padded or not, will be outlawed, as it is today and has been for a little over a year.
But the fact of the matter is that that restriction will not be respected in practice. I am willing to bet a case of good Dutch
beer that there will be no big change in wildlife manage-ment or pest control throughout Europe. Animals will not be better off
in our part of the world. The Netherlands will go on drowning a million furbearers every year. France will not stop taking its muskrats and wild cats in soft catch devices. Portugal will continue taking wolfes in leghold traps, whether they use padded types or not in Portugal I don't know.
In Canada, it is a different situation. Since the late 1980'ies, well before this whole row started, trapper education has been mandatory in all Canadian provinces. The Canadians have massive programs of trapper education and trapper license requirements, resulting in clearly better standards than those of the old days, such as the ones we still allow in many countries here in Europe.
By and large, there are no EU rules for European trappers. Many of them can - and do! - go on using the same methods which their political leaders cite as a pretext for not allowing fur from other countries, which in turn have educated their trappers to use better gear. EU authorities, on the other hand, haven't lifted a finger to educate the European public about how to trap animals in Europe. What is even more surprising: these aspects of the fur issue have never been as much as hinted at in the Eurogroup for Animal Welfare.
Did someone call this issue an ethical one?
In this part of the European world, the indigenous peoples' voice is like someone crying in the desert. They need to be able to
uphold life the way life has always been upheld in the Arctic: by apprehending and killing wild animals, eating their flesh, using their skin, trading the by-products for the commodities that cost money. In and through it all, honouring the basic principle of a sustainable and responsible use of nature's resources. And paying attention to modern-day sensiti-vities about animal welfare, using the best available technology and as humane hunting methods as possible in actual practice.
Viewing colonial history, Europe has a special obligation to be attentive to the needs of indigenous peoples, and Holland not the least! Creating trade barriers which hurt poor people overseas is not only unaccep-table. It is an abomination.
The European countries, as well as the EEC/EU institutions, have consistently supported the report from the World Commission on Environment and Development, the guidelines laid down in the World Conservation Strategy, the Agenda 21, the Rio Declaration Principles and the Bio Diversity Convention.
It is appropriate that EU make an effort to identify the relevance of all these international agreements to the issue at hand, and act ac-cordingly.
1) the way of life of the Cree, Inuit, Innu, Dene, Athaba-scans, Haïda, Aleut, Chukchi, Evenk, Yukaghir, Koryak, Itelmen, Hanti-Mansi, Sami and many more small peoples -