Last updated at 09:25, Friday, 16 October 2009

In a recent letter to your paper, Alan Kirby suggested that somehow society is better for banning fox hunting.

That, I would suggest, is inaccurate.

It would seem that he is more interested in banning hunting than improving animal welfare.

This “civilised, enlightened and democratic” society has banned a process that is indeed similar to the way in which wolves hunt and the academic basis for this view can be read on the Veterinary Association for Wildlife Management’s website; www.vet-wildlifemanagement.org.uk, in the report The Natural Chase.

For someone who purports to care for animals, I note that Mr Kirby does not give even the slightest mention of what is now happening to the fox.

Hunting with hounds is non-wounding, as the quarry animal is either caught or it escapes unscathed.

Hunting with scenting hounds is selective, as the quarry animal is caught in direct relation to its debility, thereby removing the old, weak and injured not only for the sake of that individual animal, but also for the health of the population.

Of course hunts chase fit foxes as well as unfit ones – it is the unfit ones that get caught and that is how the selective process works.

Fear, which is better described as alertness, is vital for animals living in the wild – something that is not the same for a human or domestic animal in the same circumstances.

To dismiss Richard Martin, as Alan Kirby does, as some sort of upper class maverick that just happened to care about cruelty to domestic animals is nonsense.

Martin, the former MP for Galway, successfully steered the first animal welfare law in Britain onto the statute book.

As a friend of William Wilberforce, the anti-slavery champion, they together founded the RSPCA. Martin obviously knew about cruelty to animals and yet saw hunting as acceptable.

The Hunting Act has banned a natural process that was selective and non-wounding and despite claims at its time of passing that it was “a watershed in the development of a more civilised society for people and animals”, figures from the RSPCA have shown a year-on-year rise in animal cruelty cases.

So much for moving on to a more civilised and enlightened society.

JAMES BARRINGTON
Welfare consultant to the Council of Hunting Associations

• According to Ian Addison, the Hunting Act is unjustified, unjust and harmful (The Cumberland News, October 2).

This is an incorrect but typical response from those who support the cruelty of hunting with dogs. It doesn’t matter whether people are academics, knights of the realm, lords, bishops or princes, if they can see nothing wrong in setting a pack of dogs on to a terrified wild animal, they are lacking in both compassion and decency.

In a civilised society, there is no room for those who support such extremes, no matter how high a position they appear to be held in.

The amount of pressure put on MPs in the years prior to the ban by ordinary people concerned with the obscenity of hunting, was the reason the Hunting Act came into existence, whatever hunt apologists claim.

Our wild animals need to be protected, so the law needs to be strengthened to make absolutely certain the Act and the wishes of the majority are upheld.

ELAINE MILBOURN
Torpenhow

First published at 05:22, Friday, 16 October 2009
Published by http://www.cumberlandnews.co.uk