Greenlanders win Danish support for attempt to justify ‘humane’ shooting of seals, as they claim their communities are under threat

The gamey, fishy aroma of barbecued seal will be assailing the nostrils of gourmet MEPs in Strasbourg this week.

Greenland’s Inuit chefs, clad in sealskin outfits and trousers fashioned from polar bear fur, will not be offended if MEPs decline morsels of the whiskered marine mammal from the grill. But the chefs hope that their planned cookery session will help to convince European lawmakers to reverse what they regard as a misguided ban on the importation of seal products that is driving a centuries-old way of life to the edge of extinction.

Exports of seal pelts have plummeted by 90% since the introduction of the European ban in 2009. The impact on subsistence economies in Greenland’s 60 coastal communities has been catastrophic. “It’s a tragic situation for us,” says Karl Lyberth, a hunter who used to be Greenland’s minister of fishing, agriculture and food. “A lot of people in the EU don’t understand our way of life.”

A delegation of Greenland seal hunters will board a bus in Copenhagen on Monday for the journey to Strasbourg to lobby parliamentarians.

They are steeling themselves for a clash of cultures and a struggle to change public perceptions. The hunters’ main hurdle is to overcome the image promulgated by animal welfare campaigners of helpless cuddly baby seals being clubbed to death on ice floes in Canada.

International public outrage at the annual Canadian cull contributed in no small way to the European moratorium. “To a large extent it’s the last call for a lot of the hunters,’ says Rasmus Holm of Inuit Sila, the Greenlandic Hunters and Fishermen’s Association. “If the current crisis continues, they won’t have any alternative but to claim social security.”

The Greenlanders say that their methods for dispatching seals are humane. Most hunters use rifles. Seals, they argue, enjoy much more exuberant lives in their natural habitat than farm animals destined for consumption at European dining tables.

Denmark’s foreign minister, Martin Lidegaard, is bewildered by the EU’s lack of empathy for their plight and a policy that prioritises the interests of animals over those of humans. (Greenland is part of the Danish Commonwealth, but not part of the EU.)

“The seals up here have lived a very good life,” said Lidegaard during a recent visit to Ilulissat, in western Greenland. “They are hunted in a very sustainable way. The meat is eaten by the Greenlanders and the fur is then sold. That’s as sustainable as it gets.

“If we don’t get exports to the EU up running again, then there will be no business for the hunters in Greenland. I don’t get it. I don’t see any fur being more sustainable than that which comes from seals.”

An estimated 12 million seals inhabit the waters surrounding the world’s biggest island and the population is exploding because of the European ban. Hunters “harvest” approximately 150,000 seals a year, and biologists calculate that a figure of 500,000 annually would be sustainable. With its voracious appetite, an average seal consumes 17kg of fish a day, threatening the livelihoods of Greenland’s coastal fishermen.

“For us it’s a tragic situation,” says Kai Andersen, Greenland’s deputy foreign minister. “We can watch on TV that in Denmark they are culling seal and burning them. This is a resource that we have used for thousands of years to export and to live off and make our livelihood from, but we’re not allowed to export it any more. But you’re destroying it in Europe to get rid of it as vermin.”

The Inuit hunters have also suffered from the increasing effects of climate change. Rising ocean temperatures of between one to two degrees Celsius have eroded the sea ice from underneath, which means that the traditional method of hunting – using a sled pulled by a pack of huskies – is too perilous to undertake. In some places, the ice is so thin it cannot bear the weight of the hunter and his dogs.

The ability to place meat on the table is regarded as a matter of national pride. From lawyers to carpenters, every Greenlander hunts seal as a crucial source of nutrition.

Like other marine mammals, they are rich in vitamin C, and vital for a balanced diet, especially as it is only possible to grow vegetables in southern Greenland during the summer.

Packed sea ice isolates scores of communities for long periods of the year, making the delivery of food impossible. “Your only source of food is what you can catch and hunt yourself,” says Andersen.

One substantial irony for Denmark, Greenland’s colonial matriarch, is that while the sales of seal pelts are at an all-time low, exports of mink fur are thriving, despite the animals being kept in cages.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Inuit hunter Nukappi Brandt steers his small boat as he and his daughters scan the water for seals. Photograph: Brennan Linsley/Associated Press

Mink’s revival is due in part to fashion designers such as Dolce & Gabbana and Tom Ford incorporating it in their collections. But sealskin has failed to land a high-profile champion in the fashion world, although Denmark’s Crown Prince Fredrik and his Australian wife Mary, regarded by Hello! magazine as one of the world’s best dressed women, did sport seal garments during their tour of Greenland last summer.

The EU has given the Greenlanders a special exemption so that traditionally hunted seal skins can be exported. But this dispensation is largely academic, by the admission of Hans Stielstra, head of international environmental issues at the European commission. “Their problem is that the general ban has destroyed the market in the EU,” says Stielstra. “It’s not so much that we are limiting the possibilities for the Inuit in Greenland to export seal products to the EU because they can, but the overall ban will remain in place unless the council and the parliament decide otherwise.”

The EU is about to tweak its legislation on seal imports to accommodate the World Trade Organisation.

The Greenlanders will appeal to MEPs to fund an information campaign to counter anti-sealskin propaganda in an attempt to make their pelts more attractive to consumers and restore exports to pre-ban levels.

“To punish a whole population, many of whom live on the margins of existence, on the basis of wrong facts, is very sad,” says Andersen.

In March, the Greenlanders lobbied France’s foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, when he visited the city of Ilulissat to grasp the extent of climate change in advance of Paris’s hosting a United Nations conference on the issue in December. He was sympathetic to the hunters’ plight, but was not optimistic about influencing change within the EU.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An Inuit fisherman and his family have a seal meat barbecue in Greenland. Photograph: Uriel Sinai/Getty Images

“Public opinion in our countries disapproves of seal fur,” said Fabius. “We must try to find a solution, if it exists, to help these people to live. But it’s not easy, not easy at all.”

Greenpeace, which spearheaded the anti-seal-hunt campaign following the Canadian cull, is belatedly coming to the Greenlanders’ aid. The organisation is blamed by Canadian Inuit for plunging their communities into poverty. In an op-ed in the Canadian website Nunatsiaq Online, the new head of Greenpeace Canada, Joanna Kerr, signalled a major U-turn.

“Our campaign against commercial sealing did hurt many, both economically and culturally. The time has come to set the record straight,” she wrote.

“Like the corporations we campaign against, we too must be open to change. Open to examining ourselves, our history, and the impact our campaigns have had, and to constantly reassessing ourselves — not just by apologising, but by humbly making amends and changing the way we work.”

Jon Burgwald, Greenpeace’s spokesman in Copenhagen, is more circumspect. “Greenpeace recognises the right of Arctic indigenous peoples to the sustainable use of natural resources,” he told the Observer. “The EU must increase the effort to inform the public and the relevant authorities in the member states of the differences between the sustainable hunts conducted by indigenous communities and the commercial hunt.”

These remarks should salve the conscience of any Euro MP who is tempted by the exotic bouquet of a seal kebab this week.