Countryside Alliance respond to Labour Animal Welfare Manifesto

The Countryside Alliance welcomes any effort to improve animal welfare in Britain. Labour's recently published 50 point Animal Welfare Manifesto is in some parts commendable. The tightening of penalties for illegal killing of birds of prey and the establishment of a National Wildlife Crime Strategy are sensible additions to current laws. We equally welcome tightening regulations around animal sanctuaries. This should prevent the kind of unacceptable suffering witnessed at the likes of the deer sanctuary run by the League Against Cruel Sports at Baronsdown, Somerset.

There remain however, some serious areas of concern within their manifesto. There are a number of really important environmental issues facing our country, but instead Labour have focused, at least in part, to the class war agenda.

They claim that grouse shooting could be having detrimental effects on the climate and wildlife. This is blatantly ignoring the facts.

It falls on anyone who claims that there are viable alternatives to grouse shooting, to first undertake a thorough assessment of the environmental, social, and economic consequences that would arise as a result. These are the three dimensions to the core of mainstream sustainability that have been identified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and anyone wanting to see a change to the status quo has a responsibility to ensure that any alternative land use is at least as beneficial. Labour must articulate their alternative solution before any decision can be taken, given the international importance of Britain's heather moorland and the associated peatlands in Britain. It is widely recognised that grouse shooting has been instrumental in protecting heather moorland and its associated peatlands.

Labour also intend to implement further laws to strengthen the illogical Hunting Act. At the Countryside Alliance, we have yet to receive any straight answers on what the problem with foxhunting is or what solutions Labour have, other than they seem obsessed with wanting people who wear red coats and ride horses hauled before the courts. You might have thought that if improving animal welfare was the real motive behind the Hunting Act, a bit of research might have been undertaken to see precisely what effect this law has had on those species previously hunted. Sadly, we all know this is obviously a cover for yet another attack on rural communities – or simply put, people they perceive to generally not vote Labour.

Banning the use of snares is wholly inappropriate, and goes against a previous Labour government that reviewed snare usage and published a code of practice for snaring. The document is too vague throughout, with no notes on how subjective terms, such as 'threatened species', will be evaluated. Most worrying of all, it betrays a fundamental lack of understanding in some areas, such as calling for an end of cage use in the rearing of game birds. While some game farms use cages to house laying stock, cages are not used in the rearing of any British game birds.

The Countryside Alliance fights for rural communities up and down the country. To do so, we work across the political spectrum and are pro-dialogue with elected representatives at all levels of governance. We reiterate our offer to meet with Labour to discuss our concerns and to offer guidance and advice on the issues that matter to countryside communities.