The government is considering a crackdown on pheasant shooting in England as part of a consultation on strict new animal welfare laws that would affect shoot organisers.
Animal welfare. I could think of 100 better things to choose before I got to pheasant shooting if animal welfare really was the aim, and I bet you could too, Reader.
Every year, thousands of people descend on the countryside to shoot pheasants and partridges. Millions of the game birds are released in advance of the shoots. Many are brought over from France as chicks and eggs, and reared by gamekeepers until they are ready to be released for shooting in the autumn. Grouse are wild rather than reared or farmed animals.
I love game, but I’ve never been partial to grouse, no matter where I’ve had it.
While chickens and other farmed birds have to be looked after to minimum animal welfare standards, these do not apply to game birds. Poultry birds, for example, have minimum space standards for their cages and have to be provided with enrichment, such as perches and items to scratch and peck. Chicken and other poultry farms are subject to regular animal welfare inspections, which are not in place for sites rearing pheasants and partridges.
This is not being driven by concern for the welfare of the birds, but by loathing of the people involved in the sport of course. Because they are, to a man and a woman, The Enemy of English Country Persuits..
Claire Bass, the director of campaigns at Humane World for Animals UK, said: “The shooting industry breeds millions of birds on an industrial scale, and these animals have fallen through the cracks of animal welfare law. Confined in barren wire cages for most of their lives, birds suffer stress-related injuries and feather loss and are exposed to blazing summer heat and other weather extremes.”
Dr Ruth Tingay, a co-director of Wild Justice, said: “Putting an end to the rearing and annual release in to the countryside of an estimated 60 million non-native game birds for shooting should be the government’s focus. If they stop that, then the associated welfare issues would also be sorted. Defra needs to stop tinkering around the edges and deal with this head on.”
When any of these people start to address halal and kosher slaughter with the same zeal, I might - might- just start to listen to them on the subject of game ird shooting. But I never will…
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