Pheasant Shooting - getting ready for the annual slaughter

There is probably nothing more despicable than the braying wannabe squires who in the autumn , slaughter the semi domesticated pheasant in the name of "country sports". Probably the deepest and darkest irony is that the President of the World Wild Life Fund, Phil the Greek, Duke of Edinburgh is an enthusiastic supporter of this primitive ritual - his Sandringham Estate is an enthusiastic importer of French Red legged Partridge which is not a native bird - it provides better "sport". Which in shooting speak means the little buggers zig and zag making them harder to shoot.

Most of us only become aware of this annual festival of primitive bloodlust as the guns start to boom in the autumn, but the season has already started as the young pheasants and partriges are bred in their millions (34 Million are bred every year). Gamekeepers are also kept busy, legally trapping stoats and weasels, and often laying illegal poison baits for birds of prey.

South East Green MP Caroline Sharp has pointed out that many of these birds start life being intensively reared under conditions outlawed by EU legislation for rearing poultry.

40% of the pheasants reared annually in the UK are sourced in France as eggs, day old chicks and poults so EU wide legislation is needed or at least a swift amendment to current legislation (US sourced eggs are also favoured as they are disease free). For example a single hatchery, Hy Fly Game hatcheries near Blackpool will set 2 million eggs this year and can produce 250,000 weekly. They also set some half a million red legged partridge and claim to be the country's largest supplier. They specialise in Japanese Green cross pheasants which is "unusually wild and extremely fast on the wing" ...that " provides a fantastic bird for commercial shoots where good returns are as important as flying ability."

Companies such as Purina and Pillsbury manufacture feeds to provide an unnatural and fattening diet.

In the last few years, the slaying fields have produced so many dead birds, they prove to be unsaleable and are buried.

Of course if you are one of the neanderthals who find killing wild/ semi-domesticated birds is fun ..... for more see Thursday, September 28, 2006 BBC complicit in publicising game shooting propaganda and background information from Animal Aid