For pity's sake, lets kill them before they go

Simon Penn

I gave up fox hunting years ago; at about the same time as I gave up shooting. The last shot I ever fired was on our farm in pre-myxomatosis days. The rabbits were legion and the inroads they made into the headlands of our fields of growing corn were little short of disastrous. I knew as soon as I pulled the trigger that I'd made a bad shot, and that my victim was wounded and not killed outright.

Six weeks later I was passing that same spot when I saw a rabbit; thin, poor, out of condition — but alive. He was pulling himself around on three legs. The fourth, a twisted, shapeless, useless member, he somehow dragged behind him.

So I suppose I could now be classed as an anti-blood sports type; and yet I find myself getting absolutely hopping mad at all the fuss and outcry because Princess Anne enjoys a good gallop over the lovely winter fields of her own countryside. And I'll tell you exactly why.

When the war broke out our livelihood, which was the breeding of beautiful pedigree dogs and horses, came to an abrupt end, so it seemed that the best thing we could do was to use our knowledge by producing as much food as possible. We hadn't a large acreage, so pigs and poultry seemed the answer. We scraped up all the quids we could afford to buy the very best.

The cock with his auburn plumage overlaid with a sheen of dark green was proud and magnificent, if somewhat arrogant — as was his right. The hens, with their sharply defined black and white feathers and scarlet combs were something to be admired. "Pretty as pictures they be," said the old chap who helped us.

Of course, you've guessed. One morning we went down to find them all laid low — even proud Chanticleer; and this despite chain-link fencing, and every anti-fox device known to discerning farmers. Their lovely shining plumage was despoiled by mud and blood. Their poor mangled bodies were scattered about everywhere. Some of them weren't even dead.

And yet I swear by everything I respect that when I went hunting a few days later it was in no evil spirit of revenge. All I thought about was the matchless exhilaration of feeling a good horse under me as we thundered across the winter fields; the smell of fallen leaves as we forgathered in the woodland rides; and the small triumph of clearing a hedge or a gate cleanly and neatly. And I am absolutely certain that this is exactly how Princess Anne feels when she sets out to follow hounds. So this is why I feel resentment at all this impertinent interference in the life and pursuits of a healthy, courageous young woman. (I wonder how many of the critics would face up to the three-day event!) But there's another reason for my resentment. One which goes much deeper, and prompts me to ask: Isn't it about time we got our priorities right? Isn't it about time we stopped agitating for legislation against field sports, and entered heart and soul into a campaign to put an end to cruelties now being inflicted on animals in this country which are far more horrifying; and about which very few seem to care?

How often do we see those worthy champions of animal welfare down at the docks staging their demonstrations, and shouting their slogans, at the export of live animals from Britain to foreign countries for eventual slaughter. If they stopped to think they would see that their energies would be far better employed in this direction, because I can assure them that the appalling cruelties involved in this trafficking in live animals are a thousand times worse than anything they will ever see in the hunting field.

It must be remembered that the unfortunate animals now being shipped overseas alive — pigs, sheep, cows and calves, even horses and ponies, have been domesticated by man for centuries entirely for his own use, so that now they have become completely dependent on human beings for their welfare. Yet how many of us feel any real responsibility for them?

The dedicated few who do, have, as yet, been given very little publicity. In fact they are still very much 'voices crying in the wilderness.' Yet we know from their careful research and, if I may say so, very balanced eye-witness reports, that the poor creatures about which they are so rightly concerned often arrive at the docks in this country, having sometimes been transported for hundreds of miles in overcrowded cattle trucks, with bleeding faces, broken legs and other injuries. But this is only the start of their nightmare ordeal. After arrival at the docks, sometimes a long time after, they are loaded on to ships, and later their transportation by road begins again. Often it lasts for days, over thousands of miles, without food or water. And God knows what slaugherhouse conditions await them when at last they reach the end of their terrible journey.

So can we really compare their lot with that of the fox running free and wild over his own territory? Even the hunted fox who often as not gets away with it, wily old devil that he is.

The unfairness of it all is such that I hope I may be forgiven for wondering if all this outcry against hunting is entirely due to ' pity for the poor fox ' or is, in 9 measure, a form of social snobbery — a hitting out at what some still quaintly regard as the ' privileged classes.'

Be that as it may, and speaking as one who has lived by practical farming, there can be no doubt at all that our entry into the Common Market means that this exporting of live animals will increase and increase, unless stringent laws are passed to prevent it. And the sad, ironical part is that with refrigerated ships and deeP freezers there is no real, logical justific8. tion whatsoever for its continuance.

At the beginning I said that I have given up my own particular form of blood sports, which is something entirely personal, and only concerns myself. But the appalling cruelties inflicted on domestic animals that I have described are by no means a persons' matter. They must be the deep concern ef all and every one of us.

I am by no means a rabid antiMarketeer. In fact I would go so far as t° say that, as a long-term policy, it may well prove to be the best thing for us. Like many people any resentment I may feel iS because, in this democratic state of ours, we were given no choice in the matter.

But when it comes to the decision as t° whether animals bred in this country are or are not humanely killed here before export, we must see to it that the choice is ours. Vested interests, if that is the excuse for the suffering we are condoning, or anY other excuse for that matter, must not he allowed to prevent us from being free to put an end to what is probably the worst and most protracted form of mass crueltY mankind has ever inflicted on animals.