Canada will challenge the European Union's plan to ban its seal products at the World Trade Organization, Trade Minister Stockwell Day said on Tuesday.
Earlier in the day, the European Parliament voted to pass a ban on seal product imports including pelts, oil and meat, which would mean the loss of a large market share for Canada. But the bill still must be approved by individual European governments before becoming law.
Day said the EU ban is not reasonable because Canada now practises a humane and sustainable hunt.
"We'll go to the WTO because it's clear in WTO regulations that if one country wants to ban the products of another, they have to have clear scientific, medically acceptable reasons for doing so, and this EU ban is not based on hard science," he told Canadian Press in a telephone interview from Prague.
Day said that the ban is based on emotion rather than hard facts because opponents portray the seal hunt as it was 40 years ago. He said that it has changed and that clear regulations are now in place, including a ban on hunting or harvesting baby seals.
Canada says seal hunting is necessary to maintain the animal population while giving thousands of people livelihood. But environmentalists and some EU countries' citizens have said the hunting is inhumane, citing the ways of killing and peeling the animals.