Fox Hunting

[Uhu]

Tally Ho!

quadbiking hmmm much better for the environment cough

there are certainly other people than the landed gentry participating in hunting, but dont agree that social ills have improved because of aspirations to beupper class but rather throughout history you will see the working class put up with an awful lot before they fought for equality - not aspirations. just had to rectify that although recognise its not the current point but one which never theless has been made a couple of times.

i dont think you have to be a vegetarian cow hugger to be against fox hunting. i think you can buy leather shoes and be a vegetarian. i think you an buy free range eggs and a steak. for me this equates with buying a mooncup. you can buy a mooncup so your kids dont paddle in tampons at the beach or to eat fish which have eaten your tampons - your doing a little of what you can to make things right.

i buy free range eggs. i can now afford to. there was a time where the 50p difference was so much to my budget - the choice really wasn't there for me to take. it didn't mean i didn't agree with it in principle.

it doesn't always have to be extremes. i often got the leather shoes comment when i was a vegetarian. it was like a finger pointing excersize from people who ate meat and wore leather shoes to make themselves feel better. whereas i was doing what i could at the time within my limits.

if everyone did a little it would help a lot. so berating people for eating meat - who may buy free range egs is not helpful. as is berating people who are vegetarians who buy leather shoes. we do what we can within out circumstances. there is middle ground.

Well Custardo I agree with all that. I've no problem with the bullocks next door being eaten because the have had a nice life eating grass, playing together with the sun on their backs and are happy and curious just as they should be. Nothing would make me eat veal though. I'm certainly not going to condone an animal spending it's life alone in a dark crate. It's a question of what you can find acceptable.
On that note i'm going to shut up. It's the first time i've had the nerve to join a discussion and I had to choose foxhunting!!

ks it was something a bit further down than your comment. i couldnt comment on your comment with out googling george to find out what it was all about!!

well done for joining in pixel! wht a greatone to start on

Twinkie, as I said before, foxes have evolved to survive. They rip bins apart in towns because that is where the food is. Wouldn't you do whatever you had to to feed your children?

I only buy leather in a situation where it is unavoidable. I won't buy it for myself - despite being tempted, sometimes

Do you think animal abusers are any less capable of being violent??? Animal rights protesters are not sadistic, just frustrated, and understandably so.

Finally, if my children had cancer, of course I would allow them to be treated with drugs which had been tested - not allowing it would hardly acheive anything. Once something has been tested, refusing to use it isn't going to stop the cruelty that has already happened, is it? So, wanting to ptotect my children doesn't change my stance on thw whole debate (which I thought was about hunting rather that vivisection, but it seems to be moving on to just trying to discredit me, right now)... That doesn't mean I condone the ongoing torture of animals - most of which is done to gain funding, rather than actually forward any cause. Animal testing has, in many cases hindered the progress of research. I think I stated before but human and animal physiology is too different for the results to be compatible.

To clarify, Cam, I meant that the process of rearing and slaughtering animals for meat is barbaric, rather than meat eaters. Most meat eaters I know are either ignorant or apathetic, not necessarily barbaric - that is my opinion, which I am entitled to, and to suggest that I am incapable of rational debate just because you see my views as extreme, is a bit of a cop out.

MrsDoolittle, I don't see what relevance your post about a child being murdered by his father (tragic and unforgivable as it is) has to this debate?

So if your child had a cancer that is currently untreatable you a=would just let them die, or would you want an effective treatment? I ask because my dh has a form of leukemia for which there is no cure at present. I'm sure that I would be a better person if I loved rats and mice more than him (and we both know that over 90% of testing is done on them rather than rabbits cats ot dogs), but I don't. Shall I tell him that he should die for the good of the animal kingdom?

Oh and the not comprable thing is a crock. Testicular cancer now has a 98% cure rate (at stage 1), using drugs tested on animals. 30 years ago it was less than half of that. Look at the sucess rates now with childhoof leukemias, longer life expectancy for breast cancer etc.

i see the relevence of doolittles post

Yamamoto, I agree, to some extent, that hunters hunt because they enjoy it (although I perhaps don't agree with you about their motives). I object to anyone needlessly killing animals, no matter whether there's all the ceremony or not.

As for fox hunting being an effective way to control foxes - "Fox hunting kills around 20,000 foxes annually, but this only represents around three per cent of the fox population and a tenth of the number of foxes killed annually. Overseas, rabies control programmes have indicated that in order to reduce fox numbers, the annual cull needs to be approaching 70 per cent of the population. Otherwise, the survivors and itinerant foxes taking over vacant territories can restore numbers in one breeding season.

It is clear therefore that the fox hunts play no significant role in the control of fox populations and that other factors constitute the main regulatory mechanisms controlling fox population size".

Foxhunt Killing Figures 1985-86, Professor Stephen Harris, School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol

"... over the entire area covered by the hunts, foxhunting kills about 0.10 foxes per square kilometre per annum, whereas our simulations indicate that to limit fox populations in the English midlands, a total annual mortality in excess of 0.6 foxes per square kilometre would be required."

The Impact of Sport Hunting: A Case Study, Dr D.W. Macdonald & P.J. Johnson, Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Oxford University, July 1996.

"Whilst it undoubtedly accounts for a number of foxes, the Ministry does not consider fox hunting to be a major controlling factor in the fox population".

Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, 17th February 1994.

Is that enough for you???

Jasper, my objections are not based on what foxes look like, and I find the question just a wee bit patronising. FWIW, I can't kill spiders (or any other bugs), and I am not comfortable with any killing.

Well said, Badhair. hmb, I answered this in my last post (or was it the one before...) but refusing treatment isn't exactly going to turn back time and stop the testing from having happened, is it?

LOL @ 'vegetarian cow hugger' !

I don't understand how not eating meat but still wearing leather can be you 'doing your bit' though. Obviously only where beef is concerned, but how can you object to an animal being killed for meat, but still wear it's skin which it died to provide ?! How is that 'doing your bit'? The animal died, so why not make the most of the carcass, IYSWIM. I don't mean to be confrontational, but I genuinely can't see the logic in that. For the record, I eat meat and wear leather.

HMB, there are still many examples of drugs and treatments which are around now which wouldn't have been, or were delayed because of vivisection.

If my child had a cancer that is currently untreatable then the chances of a cure or a treatment appearing before it was too late is slim. It's not even a case of animal testing or no testing. There are effective alternatives to vivisection which are providing exciting results. I would have more faith in the alternatives than hoping that the results of testing on an animal so different to humans.

No, you are deliberaly missing the point (no stomach for saying what you realy think?) There is no 'cure' for what my husband has. They can try to put it into remission but so far that is all. Life expectancy from diagnosis is currently 14 years, so with luck I hope he will see my dd leave school, and with greater luck my ds. Without a cure he will die. So it isn't a case of refusing what has been done, it is a case of the lunatic fringe stopping the research being done.

I happen to think that he, and the tousands like him who have this condition are worth more than rats and mice. Have the guts to tell me what you think.

NomdePlume, the leather industry is not just a by-product of the meat industry, it is a huge multi-million pound business in its own right. Any step that any one of us can take to reduce our negative impact on the environment is a good thing, and what right do you have to belittle someone else's efforts?

Name them. And not the old lie about antibiotics, as that was tested on blood by flemming and shown not to work. Yes it is a killer to guine pigs but it was tested by Flory and Chain on mice and shown to be effective.

Sorry HMB, maybe I am missing the point, what exactly do you want me to say????

Tell the truth, You are so wrapped up in animals you don't give a damn about people. And people who can be cured if work is done. Life isn't wishful thinking when you are living in my shoes

Bullshit HMB, you don't know the first thing about me. Caring about animals doesn't stop me from caring about people. You don't have to agree with me, but there;s no need for a personal attack.

"NomdePlume, the leather industry is not just a by-product of the meat industry, it is a huge multi-million pound business in its own right." -
Well then surely that just backs up my argument ?! Or am I missing something ?

"Any step that any one of us can take to reduce our negative impact on the environment is a good thing..."
I would agree with that, but I was genuinely asking how the meat/leather argument balanced out. How is it justified to say I don't eat meat 'cos it's cruel, only to then buy shoes made from the very same dead animal ??????

Stupidgirl, don't get p*ssed with me hon. Mine was a genuine, interested question.

I really don't think fox hunting is comparable to bear baiting. The foxes aren't chained up with rings through their noses and kept in awful captivity and poked with pointy sticks in order to be used again and again to attack each other. It's quite different, IMO. Do those who oppose fox hunting - and I don't care much - want to see Rentokil banned because they kill rats? Battery farming is really cruel IMO, much, much crueller than hunting. Most people seem to agree that the foxes will still die, so I don't see the point of banning hunting.

NdP, my point was that the leather industry and the meat industry aren't linked in the way most people seem to think. Using leather is not just using up the waste which would otherwise be thrown out.

As I said further down, I buy leather shoes for my children, as I can't afford the £80 per child that it would cost every time they need new shoes. The poster who you responded to said she couldn't afford to buy non-leather shoes for herself.

The fact that she buys leather shoes (and I buy leather shoes for my kids) does not detract from the fact that she is saving countless lives by not eating dead animals.

I don't think the anti-hunting argument has anything to do with being nice to foxes actually - even Stupidgirl admits that they kill very few foxes - but resentment that someone gets pleasure from hunting, a pleasure to which the kill is, from what I gather, almost entirely incidental.
Are pest controllers sick perverted sadists too? Anyone who puts down mouse poison? Or fishermen? Or farmers? That's an awful lot of mild-mannered, law-abiding sick perverted sadists.

The drugs thalidomide, Zomax, and DES were all tested on animals and judged safe but had devastating consequences for the humans who used them

A General Accounting Office report, released in May 1990, found that more than half of the prescription drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration between 1976 and 1985 caused side effects that were serious enough to cause the drugs to be withdrawn from the market or relabeled. All of these drugs had been tested on animals

"A 1989 study to determine the carcinogenicity of fluoride illustrated this fact. Approximately 520 rats and 520 mice were given daily doses of the mineral for two years. Not one mouse was adversely affected by the fluoride, but the rats experienced health problems including cancer of the mouth and bone. As test data cannot accurately be extrapolated from a mouse to a rat, it can't be argued that data can accurately be extrapolated from either species to a human"

"Animal experimentation also misleads researchers in their studies. Dr. Albert Sabin, who developed the oral polio vaccine, cited in testimony at a congressional hearing this example of the dangers of animal-based research: "[p]aralytic polio could be dealt with only by preventing the irreversible destruction of the large number of motor nerve cells, and the work on prevention was delayed by an erroneous conception of the nature of the human disease based on misleading experimental models of the disease in monkeys"

"Dr. Charles Mayo, founder of the Mayo Clinic, explains, "I abhor vivisection. It should at least be curbed. Better, it should be abolished. I know of no achievement through vivisection, no scientific discovery, that could not have been obtained without such barbarism and cruelty. The whole thing is evil." Quoted by William H. Hendrix, New York Daily News, Mar. 13, 1961.

"Dr. Edward Kass, of the Harvard Medical School, said in a speech he gave to the Infectious Disease Society of America: "[I]t was not medical research that had stamped out tuberculosis, diphtheria, pneumonia and puerperal sepsis; the primary credit for those monumental accomplishments must go to public health, sanitation and the general improvement in the standard of living brought about by industrialization."Prouix, Lawrence, "A History of Progress," Washington Post, Feb. 21, 1995.

Most killer diseases in this country (heart disease, cancer, and stroke) can be prevented by eating a low-fat, vegetarian diet, refraining from smoking and alcohol abuse, and exercising regularly. These simple lifestyle changes can also help prevent arthritis, adult-onset diabetes, ulcers, and a long list of other illnesses. But of course it is more profitable for drug companies to make money from producing more and more needless drugs, than to encourage prevention.