TALKING POINT
TALKING POINT
It is sheer hypocrisy to
attack field sports but
to happily eat meat
and fish sometimes
raised and killed
the cruellest of
circumstances, says
Patrick Godwin
I am a countryman born and bred. I earn my living from the land, and I get my pleasure from the sporting opportunities it offers. However, all that I hold dear about my way of life now seems to be under threat. As suburban man becomes more vocal as to how country yokels should conduct their lives I become increasingly angry.
I enjoy the cut and thrust of debate, but what I cannot abide is the current hypocrisy of the so called animal rights movement. I refer to their complaints against live animal exports or law abiding field sportsmen, and the threat that this movement brings to a way of life I, and many others, hold dear.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word as "falsely pretending to be virtuous". What are animal rights? Do all forms of life have the same rights? Does the fly buzzing around the window frame deserve the same attention as an orang-utan in some zoo?
Obviously the answer is no. Most people would swat the fly and pity the orang-utan. Where does the fine line of judgment come? Who decides what is deserving of rights and what is not, and what scale shall be put on these passports to an easier existence?
It is impossible to create some form of league table of higher mammals and a lower division of millions of other species. It is impossible to argue that one animal has more rights than any other. All animals deserve our respect and admiration.
Every right-thinking person abhors cruelty to animals in any form. But what clouds the issue is the definition of cruelty, and the degree of suffering the animal may or may not be exposed to. Is a mouse teased by a cat subjected to more or less terror than a fox pursued by hounds? Does a goldfish transported from a fairground in a polythene bag and kept in a small glass bowl suffer more or less than a fish caught from a river or lake and swiftly despatched?
To answer those questions is to fall into the trap of anthropomorphism. We would have to put our 20th century mind into an animals brain, and live the life of a fox or a goldfish. That trap is riddled with political correctness, poor science and arguments that can never be won.
If anyone can say that their lives are free from all forms of animal suffering then I would gladly sit down and debate the subject of country sports. But there are not going to be many takers. I see no difference between keeping a pet cat with all its hunting instincts and a ferret used for rabbiting. The piece of cod on last nights supper table was not caught by rod and line and swiftly dispatched, it was caught by the gills and left on the deck of some trawler to suffocate. The chicken nuggets demolished by the children for lunch were not hand-reared, released into the wild and shot cleanly. Their fate was to see no sunshine, be regularly dosed with antibiotics, mechanically harvested and crated up to be transported by road and electrocuted.
So if one takes up the cudgels for the anti-movement, first look at your life-style. If, after close scrutiny no anomalies are recognised, then you indeed are on a different planet from me. But remember, even the leather on your feet and the soap in the bathroom were once living creatures.
If you want to ban hunting with hounds then I suggest you form an orderly queue for the honour of putting down 20,000 hounds that will no longer have any purpose in life.
Believe me, a foxhound is no pet to keep in a small box in town. He needs more than a walk to fetch the paper on a Sunday morning, and unless he can get the rights he deserves, where is the justice?
What are animal rights?Do all
forms of life have the same rights? Does
the fly buzzing around the window frame deserve the same attention as an
orang-utan in
a zoo?