Canada on Monday set a limit for its annual seal cull this year of 275,000 harp seals, and announced new rules to make the slaughter less cruel.

The quota includes allocations of 2,000 seals for personal use and almost 5,000 seals for aboriginal hunters, as well as 16,000 seals carried over from last year for commercial fleets that did not capture their 2007 quota, fisheries officials said.

Canada banned the killing of the youngest seals, less than 12 days old, in 1987 amid criticisms and threats of European boycotts that pushed the industry to the brink of collapse.

As well, Canada has adopted recommendations of the Independent Veterinarians Working Group to "ensure beyond any possible doubt that a seal is dead before it's skinned," said fisheries spokesman Phil Jenkins.

The new rules require hunters to check an animal's pupils for a blinking reflex, and to slit its main arteries under its flippers, after striking or shooting a seal.

In recent years, demonstrators in Europe and North America have denounced the "cruelty" of seal hunting. Belgium and the Netherlands have since banned imports of seal products, and last month, Germany proposed its own ban.

The Dalai Lama, Paul McCartney, French film legend Brigitte Bardot, actors Kim Bassinger, Juliette Binoche and Richard Dean Anderson, and Canadian-born actress and former Playboy model Pamela Anderson, among many others, have campaigned against the hunt.