The critics are right. The decision by a World Trade Organization panel to uphold a European Union ban on Canadian seal products does have profound implications for other animal industries.

And that’s not such a bad thing.

In effect, the WTO panel upheld the ban on moral grounds. It agreed that the member nations of the European Union find the killing and skinning methods used by Canadian sealers morally reprehensible.

And it ruled that the most reasonable remedy was to uphold the EU ban on importing Canadian seal products.

The 28-member EU does make an exception for seals killed in aboriginal subsistence hunts, as well as those culled for reasons of marine management — although the WTO panel said the rules here are applied inconsistently.

For Canadian commercial sealers, the decision merely confirms a fact that should have been obvious: To all intents and purposes, their industry is dead.

The United States has banned the importation of seal products since 1972. Russia, which at one point had been the number one market for seal pelts, instituted its own ban two years ago. Taiwan and Mexico also have bans.

The Canadian industry, centred in Newfoundland and Labrador, has withered accordingly. Fewer than 850 people were employed in the hunt this year.

In a world dominated by the ideology of unrestricted trade, this week’s decision — based as it is on morality — stands out.

Stretching back to the era of the slave trade, nations have long guarded the right to limit commerce on moral grounds. But as U.S. law professor Steve Charnovitz wrote 15 years ago, the modern implications of this so-called moral exception are only gradually coming into focus.

The WTO’s morals clause dates back to 1946 and was insisted upon by the United States. Codified in Article XX of the 1994 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, it is remarkably broad.

It allows signatories to the global pact to pass trade restriction laws necessary for the “protection of public morals” as well as those required to “protect human, animal or plant life or health.”

The only limitations on such bans are that they must be applied equally to all countries and that they cannot act as “disguised restriction(s) on international trade”.

Israel, for instance, bans the importation of non-kosher meat. Many countries ban imports of obscene photographs. Such bans are not usually challenged.

But some are. When the U.S., on moral grounds, banned the import of tuna netted in a manner that also killed dolphins, Mexico took it to an international trade dispute panel and, at the first level, won.

Ottawa has said it will appeal the seal decision to a WTO appellate panel. Who knows? It might succeed.

But if it does not, the repercussions will be far-reaching.

Europeans in particular are focusing on animal welfare. Methods of livestock farming that are common in Canada — such as confining pigs and chickens to small pens or keeping calves in tiny crates — are under increasing attack in EU countries.

Since January, the practice of keeping pregnant sows in gestation crates has been banned in the EU. A similar ban, on so-called barren battery chicken cages, came into effect last year.

An EU ban on veal crates, which prevent calves from even turning around during their short lives, took force six years ago.

“The poultry, pork and beef industry — they’re next,” Terry Audla, president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami and a critic of the WTO decision, told Canadian Press this week. He’s almost certainly right.

The idea of restricting international trade in animals for moral reasons is not new. The U.S. already bans the importation of meat from animals killed inhumanely. But the definition of inhumane is changing.

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In Canada, governments still deem it acceptable to raise livestock under conditions that the Europeans deem barbaric. Yet these same governments also hope to use the recently-signed Canada-EU trade treaty to export great quantities of pork and beef to Europe.

The WTO sealing decision underlines the contradiction here. Something will have to give.

Thomas Walkom's column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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