Today the European Parliament voted 550 to 49 in favour to ban the trade of all seal products (such as fur and omega-3) within the European Union. The new EU-wide legislation is meant to send a clear signal to Canada that their annual commercial slaughter of seals is “inherently inhumane.”

“The legislation follows lobbying by animal welfare groups, which have long argued that the clubbing of seal pups by hunters is barbaric.

Canada kills about 300,000 seals annually off its east coast – the biggest such hunt in the world.”

Stavros Dimas, European Commissioner for the Environment, welcomed the new ban and said that the new legislation “addresses EU citizens’ concerns with regard to the cruel hunting methods of seals.”

Caroline Lucas, MEP for the Greens in the UK, said that “today, nearly one million seals are slaughtered annually in commercial seal kills around the world”, and that this new legislation will help end “one of the most vile examples of animal cruelty.”

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The annual seal massacre in Canada has started. This year the Canadian government has set a target of over 280000 baby seals to be clubbed to death and skinned to provide coats, hats, handbags and other accessories for the fashion market.

This seal hunt is the largest commercial hunt for marine mammals in the world and has been met with protests from around the world for years now. And this year is no different. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) says the hunt should be stopped because it’s cruel, unsustainable and lacks proper monitoring from federal agencies. The European Union is currently being pushed to introduce a ban on commercial trading with seal skin in a few weeks. And just recently Russia decided to close down their seal hunt in the White Sea indefinitely.

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Last week the ice at the North Pole melted at an “unprecedented rate.” And that has some scientists worrying that the Arctic could become ice-free during the summers as early as 2013, the Guardian reports.

The storms over the Alaska’s Beaufort Sea last week brought with them not just bad weather but also streams of hot air into the Arctic. Satellite images that were taken shortly after could show that the ice caps had started to “disintegrate dramatically.” And because of that the scientists believes that the melting could exceed last year’s record loss of ice.

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The Caribbean monk seal has gone “the way of the dodo” and been officially listed as extinct by the US Government. The Caribbean monk seal is, so far, the only seal species to go extinct due to human causes.

“Humans left the Caribbean monk seal population unsustainable after overhunting them, Unfortunately, this led to their demise and labels the species as the only seal to go extinct from human causes.”

The last time anyone sighted the Caribbean monk seal was in 1952, over 50 years ago, at Seranilla Bank, between Jamaica and the Yucatan Peninsula. In 1967 the USA listed the species as endangered due to human activities.

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