Should the Government ban fox-hunting?
YES:
The tranquillity of the countryside is shattered as a fox squeals out in agony. The blood-curdling cry signals the end to another hunt outing as a panting fox with bulging eyes is knocked off its feet and eviscerated. The frenzied hounds are fervently urged on by a cacophony of hunting horns and hollering.
It's this merciless animal abuse that underlines the majority view in Ireland that fox-hunting is cruel and needs to be banned. It's the reason the Government must bring foxes to the fore in its update of our archaic animal welfare legislation.
The suffering is unrelenting in fox-hunting. As the chase gets under way and the hunters and hounds lock on to their target, the fox's desperate dash sends stress levels rocketing. The physiological effects, research has shown, include haemorrhage of the heart and lungs, congestion of the kidneys and a breakdown of muscle tissue, often followed by brain damage.
Far from displaying empathy, hunts boast about how they push foxes beyond the limits of endurance. One proclaimed that a fox was persecuted for three hours and 10 minutes while another described "pushing a fox for 50 minutes in terrible driving rain before catching it". There is more than a hint of satisfaction in the hunting reports that tell of the fox crushed under the wheels of a car or the vixen drowning in a slurry pit with hounds blocking her exit.
Foxes that manage to find refuge during a chase are only temporarily safe. The terrier work and digging-out occur when the depleted fox can do nothing but stumble down a hole in the earth. What happens next must be one of the worst imaginable acts of cruelty. A terrier is unleashed and viciously bites and claws the cowering creature into a corner. From above, hunters use shovels to uncover their severely wounded prize.
That an assault on Ireland's favourite mammal is carried out for entertainment makes fox-hunting especially despicable. Hunting apologists try to dilute the disgust with claims that they're eliminating a menace to farmers. However, the idea of the fox as an agricultural threat has long been dispelled. Both the Department of Agriculture and the National Parks and Wildlife Service concur, for example, that foxes play no significant role, if any, in lamb mortality. Eminent ecologists agree that this fascinating, social animal is the victim of smear tactics. And increasing numbers of farmers are coming to realise that it's the hunters, not the foxes, that are the real culprits.
One hunter admitted in the national media that hunts "gallop like cavalries over rain-sodden fields" and leave them "looking like venues of epic battles". Familiar devastation to farmers. Surveying their scattered livestock, broken boundaries and pockmarked pastures, they are pushing an equally pressing reason to ban fox-hunting. With bio-security a priority, and blinkered hunts apathetic about the spread of disease, landowners are demanding drag hunting as a compromise.
This humane alternative involves the pursuit of an artificially laid scent across land where the "hunters" have permission to be. Not only is it acceptable to farmers but it promises huge rewards for the Irish horse industry. A welcome outlet is created for the thousands who enjoy cross-country equestrianism but shun blood sports.
Suggestions that a ban would lead to job losses and the industry's collapse are completely unfounded. The outcome is much more likely to be the opposite. The benefits a ban brings were recently recounted by a Midlands horse dealer. "Although the introduction of the UK hunting ban was heralded by many as the end to the Irish hunter trade, its 'bad' effect went virtually unnoticed," he said. "We never had a better trade than when they brought in the ban." In a last-ditch attempt to gain a modicum of sympathy and delay the dawn of drag hunting, hunters lament that you can't teach old dogs new tricks, that a ban will necessitate the mass destruction of defunct hounds. It's a view unequivocally contradicted by a spokesperson for the UK's Council of Hunting Associations. Although disparaging "the chasing of old socks soaked in essence of fox" as "the uncomfortable in pursuit of the undignified", he concedes that drag hunting does indeed accommodate foxhounds, pointing out that "people who really know how to handle hounds are able to train them to do most things".
For the animals that suffer, for the majority who want an end to blood sports, for Ireland's image as a decent and compassionate nation, fox-hunting must finally be banned.
Philip Kiernan is spokesman for the Irish Council Against Blood Sports (www.banbloodsports.com). He declined to have his photograph taken for this article, hence the use of a silhouette.
