Greenland’s state-owned tannery Great Greenland has been banned by the government from importing Canadian seal skins due to worries over the manner in which they are killed.

This will have a significant effect on the tannery that has imported sealskins from Canada since 2003 and bought 40,000 Canadian pelts in the first nine months of 2005, out of a total number of 80,000 and 100,000 sealskins that it uses each year.

The government ordered the ban following calls from animal rights groups and Denmark's Conservative Party (Greenland is an autonomous Danish territory) to block imports of seal pelts from Canada due to reports that some animals are bludgeoned to death and skinned alive.

The tannery has refuted accusations that it has bought the pelts of animals that were bludgeoned to death stating that they received guarantees of this from their suppliers.