Hunting with dogs is barbaric
I was very annoyed with a letter from someone from London, called James Barrington who signs himself: James Barrington, Animal Welfare Consultant.
It makes him seem like an impartial person who is concerned with animal welfare.
He should instead have signed himself James Barrington, of the pro-hunting Countryside Alliance.
He started out being an executive director for the League Against Cruel Sports and stayed there for around seven years before moving to the pro-hunting lot.
His title with the Countryside Alliance is indeed an 'animal welfare consultant'.
Presumably that title aims to convince people he is concerned at the cruelty of chasing a mammal to the point of terror and exhaustion whereby it simply drops and waits to be torn to shreds by a pack of hounds.
Hunting with hounds is barbaric and vile. If I insisted on chasing one of my cockerels about for half an hour whilst waving a meat cleaver, or the butcher, let his pet dogs tear around a field after some sheep or cattle and then when the poor creatures' lungs were on fire and their legs could no longer bear them, kill them, both myself and the butcher would rightly be prosecuted by the RSPCA for cruelty.
How, then is it different if people do the same to a wild mammal. And before anyone accuses me of being a bunny hugger, I keep livestock myself for meat, milk and eggs.
I despatch my own cockerels for the table. But it is done with kindness and compassion.
How can any sane, normal human being, revel in the suffering and death of any living creature? How can they enjoy chasing a small mammal and
watching it be torn apart by the hounds before congratulating themselves?
I speak as a poultry keeper who would suffer if a fox got in among my chickens. I don't wish foxes to be hunted with hounds. If, as the pro-hunting lobby wants us to believe, hunting is all about controlling foxes, why then do they also insist that more foxes escape than are caught?
Why do they take care to protect fox dens where a vixen gives birth?
Fox hunting is purely about a jolly day out, galloping across the countryside on a horse, not pest control.
It's as crazy as me saying that I'm doing my best to control wild rats on my land, but at the same time, leaving food down for them and setting aside an area for them to breed in so that I can take pleasure in watching my terrier or my ferrets, kill them.
If any pest needs to be controlled in an area where they might cause problems, then this can be done more efficiently and more humanely by shooting.
Incidentally, foxes rarely decimate poultry simply because they can't open the big doors to the factory farms which house chickens nowadays.
PAM THOMPSON
(League Against Cruel Sports member)
Tydd St Giles
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Thursday 17 May 2012
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