European journalists who were given a media tour of Nunavut and Newfoundland during the annual seal hunt say the Canadian government, which organized the tour, may have missed its chance to create positive press on the controversial issue in Europe.

The federal department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade invited 10 journalists from Italy, Belgium, Germany, Austria and other European countries to spend the past week and a half visiting seal hunters and speaking with Inuit and industry officials in Nunavut and Newfoundland and Labrador.

Ottawa's goal with the tour — which ended Tuesday in Iqaluit — was to generate more positive coverage of the Canadian seal hunt in Europe, where anti-sealing campaigns have prompted some countries to consider banning seal imports out of concern the hunt is inhumane.

"It's a very good idea," Steen Johannessen of the national Danish News Agency said Tuesday about the tour.

"Unfortunately, it might be also very too late, because it seems that the European politicians already have determined what their positions are."

Johannessen said he learned a lot about the Inuit and Newfoundland hunts during the visit, but said Canada should have organized a tour as soon as several European countries announced plans earlier this year to ban seal product imports.

"They know the history," he said. "They know what happened in '83, when the whole seal industry crashed, when the Inuit both in Canada and in Greenland were heavily afflicted by this."

Governments in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands have said they're considering banning imported seal products, following similar laws enacted by Belgium. The European Union's executive commission plans to conduct a study to see if the annual hunt is humane.

Canada, which has maintained that an import ban would hurt the livelihoods of Inuit and Atlantic seal hunters, organized a similar media junket for foreign reporters in early February. The idea behind such tours is similar to that of trips that have been arranged for years by sealing opponents, who often pay travel costs so that foreign journalists can observe the hunt.

"The thing which is, I guess, interesting [to] me as a journalist mainly is the war of propaganda which happens between the two sides," said Ronald Schoenhuber, a newspaper reporter from Vienna.

Weather keeps reporters from seeing much of hunt

Schoenhuber added that many Europeans still think of people clubbing whitecoat pups on the ice when they think of the hunt.

The reporters on Ottawa's tour did not see much of the hunt for themselves, due to bad weather.

Ottawa-based freelance correspondent Gerd Braune, who files for newspapers in Germany, Switzerland and Luxembourg, said even though the seal hunt adds up to less than $1 million annually for Nunavut's economy, he has realized the extra money makes a difference for Inuit families.

Still, it will take time before Canada can change people's minds on the seal hunt, Braune said.

"I know it from my own experience [that] if I try to show it a little bit different, what strong reaction I get from readers and even from family members back in Germany," he said.