Marks and Sparks – are you going to attempt to sell Red Grouse stuffed full of lead in your stores this year?
Have you read this?
Have you seen these blogs (here, here, here, here) about lead levels in Red Grouse sold to the public in Iceland stores last year?
With the departure of Marc Bolland, shooter, and the arrival of Steve Rowe, Millwall fan, who has led the M&S food business, do you really want your customers to be saying ‘This isn’t just a Red Grouse with high lead levels, it’s an M&S Red Grouse with high lead levels’?
Maybe this year, under new management, you would like to promote this e-petition to your customers – 35,000 of whom have already signed it. It asks the government to ban driven grouse shooting because of the ecological damage it causes.
Even if M&S sourced grouse shot that were lead free they would still hardly be ethical. The whole industry is dependent on ecological damage and the killing of protected predators. Even if the estate supplying is one of the few who don’t break the law they benefit from neighbours who do kill birds of prey.
Hi Paul – can you foresee any circumstances in which red grouse could be harvested – i.e. is there a form of low-intensity land management from which grouse could be sourced and certified as wildlife / landscape / people friendly? I don’t know the answer but I’m not anti-wild-meat-eating per se so would be interested in people’s views.
It’s called “walked up” shooting. It’s actually hunting, and if it’s done using non-lead shot, it requires virtually no habitat destruction. The problem is that it involves sharp senses, skill and stealth it doesn’t suit crowds of drunken, loud mouthed, unfit low fore-head types.
And seeing as there’s “no Plan B”, maybe M&S could see their way clear to supporting one of the most environmentally benign industries on the planet by only selling wine with natural cork stoppers.
Send this to the CEO of SNH and ask them:
1. Why do they continue to promote lead shot grouse as a “healthy” food.
2: It would be interesting to know if the SSSI consents that they issue for Peatland sites permits the use of lead shot……which would be illegal in Scotland.
Why M&S surely you make enough profit without selling grouse that have probably had their wing feathers pulled out so they can’t fly away???
Why M&S surely you make enough profit without selling grouse that have probably had their wing feathers pulled out so they can’t fly away???
We need to make sure the arguments used are based on fact not fiction as is the case with Normas point
Is anyone reading this blog registered with Mumsnet? A thread on there discussing lead contamination in grouse meat with links to Mark’s blog and his items on Iceland frozen grouse etc and discussing the wider problems with DGS may be of interest to their readers. If a link could be included to the petition, we may get a lot more signatures. In any case it would be spreading the word and counteracting the false propaganda put out about grouse being a healthy and natural meat.
Can you post a fuller link to the thread?