Hunt ban must not be reversed

Dear sir - We are very concerned at the recent undertaking given by Shane McEntee, Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, to reverse the ban on carted stag hunting. He made his comments in the course of a debate on the Greyhound Welfare Bill. This despicably cruel practise was outlawed last year on both animal welfare and road safety grounds. The "sport" to which Minister McEntee referred in his Dail speech had nothing to do with wildlife culling or conservation. It consisted of setting a pack of hounds after a farmed or semi-domesticated stag, to be chased to exhaustion and injury for the sole purpose of amusing riders, hunt followers, and sight seers. Stags often ended the chase shaking with terror, covered in blood from head to foot, the flesh on their bodies torn by razor sharp barbed wire or brambles encountered along the route. Some stags died of heart attacks while others drowned in rivers or lakes. All were subjected to the terror and completely unnecessary suffering of this malicious and calculated act of cruelty. Added to this was the frequency of road traffic incidents involving hunted stags and the alarming case of the stag that ran, terrified and severely injured, and with hounds in pursuit, into a school playground. Children witnessed the cornering of the stag, its tongue steaming and hanging out, the blood pouring from its head. This is the practice that Minister McEntee blithely and euphemistically refers to as a "rural pursuit". It was not only animal protection groups that objected to carted stag hunting. The Kane Report commissioned by the Department of Agriculture highlighted its barbarity in very clear terms. We trust that the Labour Party and Fianna Fail will adhere to their commitments not to support any attempt to reverse the carted staghunt ban. We are surprised that the government would even contemplate turning the clock back and re-instating this nightmarish cruelty, especially as it has also pledged to update legislation protecting animals. Yours, John Fitzgerald, Campaign for the Abolition Of Cruel Sports, Kilkenny.