From the Earl of Shrewsbury (Con);
Game shooting and fishing plays an important part in the rural economy, often providing badly needed jobs and income in less favoured areas. Indeed, wildlife can prosper on well-managed shoots and fisheries. I am a firm believer that game produced by the shooting sports should go into the food chain; it is highly nutritious, low in cholesterol and fat, totally sustainable and delicious. I am enthused to learn that the supermarket chain Waitrose has announced that all game sold by it by the end of next year will be guaranteed lead-shot-free. It estimates that the resultant growth in sales of game meat will be considerably enhanced. Indeed, I had a meeting recently with the chairman of the Services Committee, together with the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, who is in his place, and members of the catering establishment of the Palace of Westminster. I learned that our catering outlets here have a policy that game products served must be free of toxic shot. I strongly support any initiative to move forward with lead-free ammunition for game shooting, as do many of my friends who take part in those activities. I doubt whether I will enhance my reputation as a champion of the shooting sports, but my plain view is that if we ourselves do not change our practices, we will have that imposed on us.
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2019-10-17/debates/33FEA568-1FAF-4F3F-8DF4-B8DB96929A58/Queen%E2%80%99SSpeech#contribution-BB9E2EC3-6708-4333-AFBD-BE47E4D89E21
And from Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab);
[registration_form]My Lords, I draw attention to my entry in the register of interests, in particular my involvement with the BioRISC initiative at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. I am delighted to follow the noble Earl, Lord Shrewsbury. I pay particular attention to his remarks and I thank him for raising the continued use of lead ammunition in this debate. As he indicated, he and I, with others, have been discussing this issue over some months. I have discussed this with the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble, and I know that he has an interest in this issue.
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2019-10-17/debates/33FEA568-1FAF-4F3F-8DF4-B8DB96929A58/Queen%E2%80%99SSpeech#contribution-BB9E2EC3-6708-4333-AFBD-BE47E4D89E21
From my perspective, this is a simple issue. Lead is a poison. We ban it in many areas of our lives, but still use it in game shooting. The use of lead ammunition is partly banned and ought to be banned completely. There is compelling evidence that lead shot pollution damages extensively the environment in which it is used, poisoning wildlife that graze on it accidentally and poisoning meat served as food, posing dangers to the vulnerable, particularly our children.
The 2019 Great British Game Week, which begins on 25 November, aims to promote the Game to Eat campaign and I expect it will have a high profile in Parliament’s catering outlets. We have been reassured that no lead shot meat will be served in the House of Lords catering outlets, but we need to ensure that none is served in any of the catering outlets in the Palace of Westminster. Of course, we then need to address the question that if we are not prepared to eat lead shot meat because we know it is potentially poisonous, why do we allow other people, particularly children, to eat it? Following up on the noble Earl’s remarks, it is our intention to invite ammunition manufacturers to come to your Lordships’ House to brief us on the alternatives. It is my intention to invite the Minister to join us at that meeting. This could be done relatively simply.
Excellent! One can take issue with the noble lord’s assertion that game meat is ‘totally sustainable’ (not if it requires scorched earth management practices to provide enough quarry for the shooters) but it is encouraging to see that the banning of lead ammunition is on the agenda in the Upper House at least. There is obviously still a long way to go but slowly, slowly catchy monkey and all that.
Brilliant Mark, your campaign against lead shot is really gathering strength and your specific argument with Waitrose has resulted in victory.
Clearly events are moving quite fast now and are being taken out the hands of this very rotten Government. So it’s very satisfying to see that the pronouncements by Ledsome and Truss when they were ministers at Defra that they were in favour of continuing with lead shot are now being shown up as being grave misjudgements. Mind you one would not expect much more.
As far as The Earl of Shrewsbury’s comments on shooting are concerned it is just another example of the vested interests of the Tories. He would say that wouldn’t he. Given a bit more time I think shooting our wildlife for fun including grouse shooting will end up going the same way as lead shot is going, namely in the bin.
Once again we’ll done Mark.
Very interesting that the Earl of Shrewsbury who ever he is, makes no mention of the lead poison picked up by our wildlife and introduced into the environment generally. Rather tunnel vision and lack of regard for our fellow creatures me thinks.