The non-profit Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan (EAST) renewed its call for ETmall not to tout Canadian seal oil after the channel agreed and indeed stopped the sale for a period last year.
EAST Director Chen Yu-min said her organization had recently received calls from consumers saying that ETmall had resumed selling seal oil on television and had been pointing out that the culling of seals for oil is legal in Canada.
Chen argued that it is not a matter legal or illegal but rather a serious environmental issue that needs support from all walks of life.
According to Chen, "a quasi-little ice age, " with the Arctic icecap increasingly melting and drifting, means that not only are seal habitats disappearing, food supplies for polar bears, which depend heavily on seal kills, are dwindling.
"Increasing sales of seal oil and related products are tantamount to stopping the environment from running sustainably," she said.
EAST has since last April been promoting a campaign calling for the boycotting of seal products by screening a film designed to shock that was shot by the Humane Society International and shows a Canadian hunter bludgeoning a seal pup with a cudgel before throwing the dying animal onto a boat.
The drive succeeded in getting the products off the shelves of retail chains including Cosmed, Watsons, Pxmart and Wellcome. ETmall and online retailer Momo Shop also said they would no longer sell seal oil and related products, Chen said.
Meanwhile, Lin Kuo-chang, an official of the Forestry Bureau under the Cabinet-level Council of Agriculture, said that while the United States and the European Union have banned imports of seal oil, Taiwan needs to amass more information before considering such a ban.
"The Taiwan public`s general opinions, including signed petitions, on the issue would be strong backup for the government should it enter talks with Canada" on banning seal products, Lin said.
However, he noted, ETmall`s continued sale of Canadian seal oil products could pose a hindrance to Taiwan`s plan to ban such items.
According to EAST, Taiwan is the fourth-largest market for Canadian seal products. From 2003 to 2009, it imported 431,364 kg of seal oil, an amount that required the killing of 120,000 seals.(*)
Editor: Aditia Maruli Radja
Copyright © ANTARA 2011
