We made a number of arguments with respect to the question of public morality and animal welfare. We emphasized the relevance of comparing the standard applicable to the commercial seal hunt with other animal welfare standards, such as wildlife hunts in the EU, for example.
Certainly we recognize the WTO members have a right to establish their own standards for animal welfare, but they have to be based on factual information. They need to not be applied arbitrarily. It's important to look at other standards in similar situations, if a country wants to go down that road and try to justify a ban on the basis of animal welfare concerns.
We pointed out also there is a much less trade-restrictive way of going about this. We pointed out that other wildlife hunts in the EU as I said are, if anything, more of an offender in this area than the seal hunt. In particular we argued an alternative mechanism and a regime that would be less trade restrictive. The EU could have accepted a certification and labelling scheme, based on an accepted animal welfare standard.
We believe, and we argued before the panel and the appellate body, that the existing requirements to ensure a humane seal hunt in Canada are adequate and even more stringent, as I said, than the standards in other EU wildlife hunts such as the deer hunt. We also pointed out the EU applies a different standard to seals, an animal that's largely hunted outside its territory, that exceeds the standard they apply to hunts within their territory.