BRUSSELS, Belgium - Animal rights groups called Friday for the European Union to ban imports of seal products, saying the latest videos of animals being beaten and shot off Canada's Atlantic coast showed the hunt is inhumane.

"We don't like the cruel seal hunt, we don't like these products in Europe," said Sonja Van Tichelen, head of Eurogroup for Animals, which represents 44 groups across Europe.

Video footage shot by activists showed sealers using rifles and hakapiks, or spiked clubs, to kill seals on ice floes, then dragging their bloodied bodies to waiting ships.

Van Tichelen said the film was shot in Canada's Gulf of St. Lawrence over the past two months.

The EU is under pressure from animal rights groups and legislators at the European Parliament to take action over the seal hunt.

EU spokeswoman Barbara Helfferlich said the union's executive body plans to propose legislation within months banning the sale of products from seals that have been "unsustainably hunted ... inhumanely killed."

Canadian officials say the hunt is sustainable, humane and well-managed. Canada's ambassador for fisheries conservation, Loyola Sullivan, warned the EU this month that Canada could take action under world trade rules if seal products such as blubber, meat or pelts are banned.

Canadian officials argue that a hunting ban would be disastrous for the aboriginal Inuit peoples who live in Canada's Arctic region and depend on the annual seal hunt for incomes and food. The Canadian hunt of some 335,000 seals in 2006 brought in about $25 million.

One Canadian sealer has been fighting back with a video of his own that is being played on YouTube.

Wayne Dickson, a sealer based in the Iles-de-la-Madeleine, Que., says opponents of the annual hunt are distributing false information about how the animals are killed.

But the animal rights groups say the methods shown on their film contravene rules the Canadian government imposed before this year's hunting season.

The rules, meant to ease EU concerns, add extra steps to make sure the animals are dead before they are skinned - a recommendation made in an EU report released in December.

The EU assembly last year issued a resolution calling on the EU to ban all fur imports. The EU has banned the import of white pelts from baby seals since 1983.

Several EU countries, such as the Netherlands and Belgium, have their own bans on all seal products. The United States has banned Canadian seal products since 1972.

The activists have also called for a total hunting ban that would affect Canada, which has the world's largest commercial hunt, along with Russia, Namibia, Greenland and EU members Finland and Sweden.

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