Shooting - What's Wrong with Shooting?

Game birds are not protected under farming regulations or animal welfare law and as a result they are reared in cruel conditions.

• Laying hens on many farms are kept in intensive conditions, using the same type of small battery cage that has been made illegal for farmed chickens.
• Chicks are kept in sheds, often packed in their thousands. The stress they endure can cause aggressive behaviours such as feather pecking and cannibalism. To control this, birds are fitted with masks or bits - devices which mutilate them and prevent their beaks from closing properly.
• The 40% of pheasants and 90% of partridges that are imported to the UK from France, Spain and Portugal also suffer immensely during transport.
• Protected species such as badgers, otters and birds of prey continue to be poisoned, trapped and shot in the name of predator control.
• There is no mandatory training required for using firearms anywhere in the UK, licences are often granted to inexperienced and young people, meaning that birds are often not killed outright but instead are wounded by novice shooters.
• Thousands of tonnes of lead shot are discharged over rural Britain. Lead shot is  harmful to wildlife preying on shot birds and can leave poisonous residue in the soil, lakes and rivers.
• Far from ending up on the dinner table, vast numbers of dead birds are dumped as waste product; they are often buried in mass graves, which pose further  environmental risks.
• It is estimated that almost half of the 47 million birds released each year  do not even reach the sight of the gun but instead die from exposure, cannibalism, predation, traffic collision or starvation. Because of their unnatural diet of soya pellets and dependence on humans to provide shelter and food, the released gamebird  is ill equipped to feed itself  and survive on its own in the wild.
• Gamekeepers snare, trap, poison and bludgeon tens of thousands of animals each week, including protected species and domestic pets, in an effort to protect game birds from natural predators.
• The mass release of pheasants can have a detrimental impact on crops and agricultural land as well as diminishing the food supply for localised wildlife.