Animal hunting objections

9:34am Friday 23rd February 2007

What were the Old Surrey, Burstow and West Kent hunt supporters, reported to the police after they illegally attacked a monitoring group's vehicle causing extensive damage and injuring the driver on February 3, trying to prove?

If they were genuinely hunting within the law, why were they so hostile to monitors who were simply collecting evidence?

This is hardly what one would expect of the law-abiding citizens that the Countryside Alliance claims to represent, and similar recent incidents (eg, the attempted body trapping of a monitoring group's van by Heythrop hunt supporters and an attack by a Dulveston West huntsman an a 60-year-old League Against Cruel Sports monitor) have ended in police action and prosecution.

There is too much evidence of a link between violent abuse of animals and violence against fellow humans for objections to live animal hunting on ethical grounds to be dismissed as "anthropomorphic".

Katherine Watson Cheshire