Wild mammal welfare and the Donoughue principle

7 Apr 2012

Here is a fairly recent article written by Jim Barrington, (James (Jim) Barrington is a former Executive Director of the League Against Cruel Sports. He has been involved in various animal welfare campaigns for almost 40 years) a man whose opinion I have grown to respect very highly, a man motivated purely by his drive to protect all animals. It is, in my view, well written, balanced and a sensible approach to an emotive and complicated issue.
Over the years, I and others here have debated hunting with hounds several times, I thought perhaps it time to move the debate on to a proper law to replace the ill thought out hunting act we currently have in place.
"We need to achieve a proper balance between the needs of animal welfare, the need to avoid deliberate cruelty and the rights of the countryside to pursue its sports such as hunting." So said Labour peer Lord Donoughue in explaining his thinking about repeal of the Hunting Act to the Sunday Telegraph in 2010.
The long-running controversy over whether or not hunting with dogs should be banned is an example of how easily an important issue can be hijacked and turned into a purely political argument, quite divorced from reality. It would be almost laughable if it were not for the fact that wild animals are now suffering in greater numbers. Lord Donoughue sums up the challenge very clearly and indeed has been at the forefront to find a solution.
If everyone who is genuinely concerned about the welfare of wild mammals could take a step back from what they think they know about hunting -- and hunting people -- it might just open the door to a fair resolution to an issue that remains stubbornly difficult for many legislators.
Where does one begin? Well, shouldn't every law start with a principle? Certainly the prevention of unnecessary suffering is a principled aim, but to then assume that all one has to do is ban hunting with dogs to achieve this is as naïve as it is ridiculous. Yet it was this simple assumption that played a large part in putting the hunting ban into law. Here's what a former director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare claimed during one of the many debates beforehand, "All we need to do is look at what happens in areas where there is already no hunting or where hunting has ended. There we find no hunting and no welfare problem either." So take hunting with dogs out of the picture and everything would be fine, would it? This is the sort of crass nonsense that has conned the public and some gullible MPs into believing that a hunting ban is a good thing.
Back to that principled position. For many years the legal definition of cruelty has been the deliberate infliction of unnecessary suffering. It's obvious that legislation which outlaws all unnecessary suffering to all wild mammals in all circumstances is not only broader than a ban on hunting with dogs but fairer too. Furthermore, such a law would be far more workable than the Hunting Act, which is confusing and based on an assumption of cruelty. It contains illogical clauses that create technical offences rather than ones that genuinely improve animal welfare.
The whole article can be read here;

10 Apr 2012

More stupidity :sad:
The difference between sitting behind a desk writing propaganda and the reality of life in the wild could not be more stark than in the case of the Hunting Act and its implementation.
Brought into law through a strange cocktail of good and bad intentions, it always had the potential to fall flat on its face when put into practice. That’s not to say that there haven’t been successful prosecutions – there have – but the vast majority of these cases could have been brought under pre-existing legislation. The Hunting Act wasn’t needed to catch these people.
But what about the people who haven’t been caught? ‘Animal abusers’ like West Country farmer Giles Bradshaw, for example, who consistently breaks the law by using his dogs to chase away deer from his woodland and then compounds his criminality by viciously not shooting those deer as the Hunting Act requires. His excuse for this cruel act is that he doesn’t want to see deer killed unnecessarily. Yes, funny that, isn’t it? An animal welfare law that makes you shoot an animal when you would prefer not to. Don’t believe me? Well, here’s the wording from the Act:
“Stalking a wild mammal, or flushing it out of cover, is exempt hunting if the conditions in this paragraph are satisfied”…one of which is…”the stalking or flushing out does not involve the use of more than two dogs”…and another is…”reasonable steps are taken for the purpose of ensuring that as soon as possible after being found or flushed out the wild mammal is shot dead by a competent person.”
In fact, reading the whole Act would be an interesting exercise for many anti hunt people, who simply assume that this law is a good thing and might be surprised by the strange and illogical nature of its drafting. Of course most won’t do that and it is this ignorance that is exploited by the anti-hunting groups.

15 Apr 2012

This law is generic and not specific. There may be codes of practice that the DPS may have access to, where they would decide if the case was in the public interest.
Critism has been passed on DEFRA and what their opinion is, however their opinion is only that. The only place that a decision could be made is in a court. So DEFRA can guess but the judge decides. Until it goes to court it is just opinion only.
In this case of the farmer, it would depend on what happens. Is the farmer "hunting" or not? If he is then he should follow the law. If he is moving on animals then why is he doing it this way. If it is the most practical way and the animals are unduly distressed then no problem, and it wouldn't fall under the hunting act because he is not hunting. However, if he doesn't control his animals and they bite the other animals then animal cruelty legislation should be used against him and not the hunting legislation.
IMO the author of the link (Donoughue) is trying to discredit a piece of legislation on an example it was not designed to control. It would be better if he explained in normal hunting practices why it is not practical. This is similar to FOREST trying to find the loop holes to the smoking legislation and hung on to the ridiculous end of the spectrum to justify their claims.
Dave_Notts

15 Apr 2012

Quote by Dave__Notts
This law is generic and not specific. There may be codes of practice that the DPS may have access to, where they would decide if the case was in the public interest.
Critism has been passed on DEFRA and what their opinion is, however their opinion is only that. The only place that a decision could be made is in a court. So DEFRA can guess but the judge decides. Until it goes to court it is just opinion only.
In this case of the farmer, it would depend on what happens. Is the farmer "hunting" or not? If he is then he should follow the law. If he is moving on animals then why is he doing it this way. If it is the most practical way and the animals are unduly distressed then no problem, and it wouldn't fall under the hunting act because he is not hunting. However, if he doesn't control his animals and they bite the other animals then animal cruelty legislation should be used against him and not the hunting legislation.
IMO the author of the link (Donoughue) is trying to discredit a piece of legislation on an example it was not designed to control. It would be better if he explained in normal hunting practices why it is not practical. This is similar to FOREST trying to find the loop holes to the smoking legislation and hung on to the ridiculous end of the spectrum to justify their claims.
Dave_Notts

Firstly, great to see you around the forums again.
(for clarification, the author of the link is Jame Barrington, animal welfare campaigner and ex member of the league of crewl sports. Donoughue is the anther of a bill put forward on several occasions)
However,
I disagree with a lot of what you say on this one Dave, I would personally say the law was actually too specific. For instance it is legal to hunt a rabbit, but not a hare unless it has been shot; a rat, but not a mouse. It is legal to use two dogs to flush a wild mammal to be shot by a waiting gun, but not three dogs. It is legal to use a terrier to flush a fox from below ground to be shot if it is threatening game birds, but illegal to use the same method if the fox is killing lambs or ground nesting birds.
Illogical in my view, what it is saying is some animals deserve better protection than others. To be honest what it actually says is the government of the time had an axe to grind with a group of people, it was a law targeted at a group of people and had little or nothing to do with animal welfare. what Donoughue puts forward is a bill to protect all wild animals not just selected few, which is what the hunting act has done.
Many of these ‘exemptions’ were designed to allow some types of hunting to continue and
were the result of political wrangling and are both illogical and unclear. Defining these exemptions has been left to the police and the courts and experience has demonstrated both are confused. Not surprisingly so too are huntsmen and this farmer.
The vast majority of convictions under the legislation are not connected to registered hunts and could have been achieved under legislation that pre-existed the Hunting Act.
Out of interest, the Hunting Act has the same status as a minor road traffic violation

15 Apr 2012

But whi is it legal to hunt a rabbit? It is because it is classed as a non-native pest and there is already legislation stating you should kill the rabbit.
Rats are a lot larger than mice and can be hunted with a terrier where as a mpuse is not. A mouse can be sticky boaded but a rat can get off the boards.
As for the number of dogs used for flushing, two dogs are ample. Any more then control is going to be harder. All laws have to pick a number e.g. 70 mph on a motorway, why not 75 or 65. No good reason but to pick a number. Arguing over the trivial deflects away from the main reason..........which none of the authors even tried to.
I have been banned for a while so I could get on with work and not be sidetracked.........now have a break so can chill out here for a while and join in the inane drivel that we spout lol

Dave_Notts

15 Apr 2012

Quote by Dave__Notts
But whi is it legal to hunt a rabbit? It is because it is classed as a non-native pest and there is already legislation stating you should kill the rabbit.
Rats are a lot larger than mice and can be hunted with a terrier where as a mpuse is not. A mouse can be sticky boaded but a rat can get off the boards.
As for the number of dogs used for flushing, two dogs are ample. Any more then control is going to be harder. All laws have to pick a number e.g. 70 mph on a motorway, why not 75 or 65. No good reason but to pick a number. Arguing over the trivial deflects away from the main reason..........which none of the authors even tried to.
I have been banned for a while so I could get on with work and not be sidetracked.........now have a break so can chill out here for a while and join in the inane drivel that we spout
Dave_Notts

I do follow your point completely, but disagree, if it is cruel and inhumane to hunt certain animals with dogs then all animals must surely be afforded the same protection. No matter what there status is on the scale of "pest" they must surely deserve equal protection from cruelty.
Inane drivel, this about as articulate as I get wink

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