Now that the 2005 shooting season is on the way, the British Association for Shooting and Conservation and other pro-shooting lobbyists are adopting a less than credible defensive posture, pretending that killing millions of birds for sport during the coming winter is a wholesome and environmentally friendly activity.
Animal Aid has produced incontrovertible evidence that the intensive breeding of millions of pheasants every year has reached obscene new depths with the use of battery cages to confine egg- producing birds.
These pheasants and partridges suffer grievously and many of those who survive to be shot are not even eaten.
Pro-shooting magazines themselves have acknowledged that large numbers of shot birds are buried and others are burned because there is no market for them.
As to the alleged conservation benefits, any animal getting in the way of the production of these birds is eliminated. This includes large numbers of stoats, weasels and corvine birds.
In addition, thousands of tons of highly toxic lead shot are showered on to the countryside every year as the shooters take aim at their feathered targets. There is nothing natural or environmentally-friendly about this activity. It is where factory farming meets blood sports.
Animal Aid is calling for a Dutch-style ban on the production of game birds to be shot for sport.
