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Birds reared to be slaughtered “just for fun”

This news post is over 5 years old
 

Only around half of the millions of birds shot during the new shooting season will never make it to a game dealer

The majority of pheasants reared for shooting are killed “just for fun”, new research shows.

Only around half of the millions of birds shot during the new shooting season will never make it to a game dealer.

According to the Savills Shoot Benchmarking Survey 2017/18, on average only 48% of the birds shot will be taken by dealers.

At least 27 million birds – and possibly many times more - are bred to be killed during the pheasant shooting season, which starts on Monday, 1 October.

This means millions are killed for no other reason other than the shooters’ pleasure.

Chris Luffingham, director of campaigns at the League Against Cruel Sports, said: “Shooting estates are churning out millions of factory-farmed pheasants and partridges into the British countryside, only for the birds to be gunned down and thrown in the incinerator, buried or fly-tipped by the roadside.

“Even if you’re happy to have pheasant for dinner, there can be no justification for this massive waste of life – just for fun, all in the name of sport..”

The report also points out that prices received for game birds have fallen by 50–60% over the last six years, and fell 35–38% between the 2016/17 and 2017/18 seasons.

It states “The market situation also meant not all shoots were able to sell their shot game, last season 46% were supplying their game dealer free of charge and 12% were paying the game dealer to collect them. There was some variation but typically payments were 20–30p per bird.”

The shooting industry has set up the British Game Alliance, in an attempt to get more people to eat game meat.

But Countryside Alliance polling showed that 85% of people had never bought pheasant or partridge to eat at home – in spite of the meat being regularly available.

Meanwhile, polling during the summer by the League Against Cruel Sports and Animal Aid showed that nearly seven out of ten people (69%) in Great Britain want game bird shooting made illegal.

Luffingham added: “You can’t shoot million and millions of pheasants then claim it’s one for the pot, when it’s blindingly obvious that most people in this country don’t put pheasant in their pot.

“The shooting industry is out of control. It’s purely about money – breed as many targets as they can then let the punters blast them to bits. Any claim that this industry cares about the birds it raises is patently nonsense.”

 

Comments

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Steve Macsweeney
over 5 years ago
As if that is not bloody enough. In order to maintain the highest number of birds to be shot for fun, gamekeepers poison, snare, trap and shoot our native wildlife in biblical numbers, each day every day. No wonder we have almost no Hen Harriers and similar birds of prey. No wonder we never see Stoats and Weasels.Corvids and foxes are demonized to justify ritual slaughter. We are 300 years behind the rest of the civilised world.This is a shitty grubby cruel practice which embarrasses decent people.
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Lok Yue
over 5 years ago
Steve Macsweeney and i must be on different planets. In the area i walk my dogs daily I see plenty of stoats and evidence of large numbers of foxes and badgers (sadly some in the form of roadkill). Birds of prey and members of the crow family are around in large numbers. This is mainly arable farmland and shot over regularly. Coveys of partridges enjoy the hedgerows, laboriously replanted and nurtured, which also provide habitat for small mammals. which 'civilised' parts of the world are we '300 years, behind?" Spain? France? Germany? Eastern europe? USA? Hardly: all these countries have thriving field sports industries. And that is part of the point: rightly or wrongly, people pay a lot of money to retain and maintain shooting habitat. No game, no habitat. Perhaps the decent people might also be embarrassed by eating factory farmed animals which never see the light of day before being rendered into cheap supermarket meat or transported hundreds of miles in vile conditions before being 'ritually slaughtered.'
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Daniel
7 months ago

I’m not totally sure that people realise exactly what goes on behind the scenes of all this shooting of game birds, like it says millions of birds are bred every year for sport and of course to make money from it, some people charge as much as £1500 and more per gun for the day depending on whereabouts in the country it is specially if it’s on a posh estate. These shoots can go on for 30 plus days a year. The birds are bred in cages mostly in woods and other places too, the ones in the woods are kept there until a few weeks if there lucky before the shoots start and then release and of course they don’t stray far from there main food supply and not knowing any different, then along come the beaters and dogs chasing them towards the people with guns. It’s absolutely disgusting what people do for money, farmers also grow what they call pheasant coverage which is basically maze plants (corn cobs) that when all that dies and dries out all the seeds drop to the floor also have corn feeder bins there so again main food supply and they don’t stray far from that and again guns one end of feild beaters and dogs the other and chasing towards the shooters, I know this as I use to work on farms contracting all over the place so sore various different things and honestly it’s disgusting, have heaters in cages for the young chick so obviously they won’t die from hyperthermia etc. many many years ago when man killed to put food on the table family that was ok, but now 85 percent off it is for greed which is selfish cruel and disgusting on so many levels this needs to be band.

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