Interesting video. Good to hear this senior man in Waitrose being so definite and forthright about banning lead for shooting as well as emphasising it’s risks for humans and wildlife.
I have to say though I dislike intensely his other motives for supporting a lead ban and that is fear of loss of increased markets for game. He clearly is a shooter and a hunter through and through. The activity of shooting our wildlife for fun will always carry with it many wildlife atrocities and much environmental destruction. This is inevitable, especially with driven grouse shooting.
Let’s be clear this guy is a keen supporter of cruel blood “sports” and the objective, however long it takes, must be to rid this country of blood “sports”.
With this guy’s motives and attitudes to shooting our wildlife I shall not be shopping at Waitrose very often if at all.
Alan, I have read your comment twice now and for the life of me I can’t see why you have 7 dislikes. What am I missing?
Yes, it’s good to know that Waitrose would rather not poison their customers, but if he really believes that his customers, especially the millennials, will buy his game meats once they know the full cost, he must be barking. Cost as in, lead poison, illegal wildlife killing, environmental damage, water pollution, flooding, depletion of peat, increased Co2. etc.
I saw the video yesterday via RP and thought then that, barring wanting to ban lead, he was talking utter bollocks. Still do.
So Waitrose don’t want to potentially poison their customers? But are happy to sell cigarettes and give them cancer some what hypercritical is it not?
John – do you support rapid phasing out of lead ammunition yourself?
Mark the issue is that the only affordable alternative to lead is steel shot, which is much lighter than lead and hence requires different ballistics to be effective, like faster speeds and larger pellet diameters and guns proofed, suitable for steel shot. Now that is not too difficult to accommodate in modern 12gauge and 20gauge guns but much much more challenging in the small gauge guns like 28ga and .410
Also up to very recently the use of steel shot has required thicker non-biodegradable plastic wads which are an issue on their own, just ask Denmark where they are littering the foreshore and hence also are looking at biodegradable wads Suitable for steel shot.
So we need a cost effective biodegradable wad which can handle steel shot and a few are starting to appear.
But they are expensive and only in 12ga and 20gauge despite being first used commercially in 2013 and really a tiny niche production quantity compared to the
non-biodegradable plastic wads used world wide.
Ok production may be increased but currently very few countries are looking to use them as they are not following the same agenda. They are virtual all made in the EU which we are now no longer part of, so can you see them falling over themselves to help us? The U.K. market and Denmark is tiny compared to the likes of the USA, commercially is the pain of investment to make them in all gauges and sufficient quantity worth the gain?
It must be a hard issue to technically solve the first announcement of a vegetable starch Biodegradable wad U.K. invention was was back in 2008, some 12 years ago but it obviously did not live up to expectations and never went into commercial use.
Currently lead is used with fibre biodegradable wads, which are not suitable for steel shot.
Would you be happy if we Just ignored the wad issue and littered the countryside with Non-biodegradable plastic?
To answer your question yes, I would like to see the rapid phasing out of lead ammunition and shot, however clearly it is not technically that simple and the industry has long recognised the need for a replacement of the plastic
non-biodegradable wad with a biodegradable one.
We should recognise we have the same goal that needs a grown up discussion about what is possible now and then perhaps we should learn from say the New Zealand model.
A ‘like’ is actually the same as a ‘dislike’ Paul Fisher. Thanks for clarifying thanks x
“We can fight for the status quo, we can stick our heads in the sand…”
There will of course be many in the target audience who will do just that, not least those who are already happy to shoot large numbers of pheasants and simply throw them in a hole in the ground. Hopefully there will be some saner members of the shooting industry who will see the sense in what he says and agree to give up lead.
Meanwhile the rest of us can continue to try to persuade our legislators that this should not be a voluntary decision in any case and that lead shot should be banned as soon as possible across all habitat types.
It is a damning indictment of the intransigence of the shooting industry that a supermarket communications manager is compelled to deliver a lecture to them on the obvious issues associated with using lead shot.
Excellent presentation btw. If BASC had any sense they would be head-hunting John Gregson for the post of CEO. But then again, look what happened to poor old John Swift..
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Interesting video. Good to hear this senior man in Waitrose being so definite and forthright about banning lead for shooting as well as emphasising it’s risks for humans and wildlife.
I have to say though I dislike intensely his other motives for supporting a lead ban and that is fear of loss of increased markets for game. He clearly is a shooter and a hunter through and through. The activity of shooting our wildlife for fun will always carry with it many wildlife atrocities and much environmental destruction. This is inevitable, especially with driven grouse shooting.
Let’s be clear this guy is a keen supporter of cruel blood “sports” and the objective, however long it takes, must be to rid this country of blood “sports”.
With this guy’s motives and attitudes to shooting our wildlife I shall not be shopping at Waitrose very often if at all.
Alan, I have read your comment twice now and for the life of me I can’t see why you have 7 dislikes. What am I missing?
Yes, it’s good to know that Waitrose would rather not poison their customers, but if he really believes that his customers, especially the millennials, will buy his game meats once they know the full cost, he must be barking. Cost as in, lead poison, illegal wildlife killing, environmental damage, water pollution, flooding, depletion of peat, increased Co2. etc.
I saw the video yesterday via RP and thought then that, barring wanting to ban lead, he was talking utter bollocks. Still do.
So Waitrose don’t want to potentially poison their customers? But are happy to sell cigarettes and give them cancer some what hypercritical is it not?
John – do you support rapid phasing out of lead ammunition yourself?
Mark the issue is that the only affordable alternative to lead is steel shot, which is much lighter than lead and hence requires different ballistics to be effective, like faster speeds and larger pellet diameters and guns proofed, suitable for steel shot. Now that is not too difficult to accommodate in modern 12gauge and 20gauge guns but much much more challenging in the small gauge guns like 28ga and .410
Also up to very recently the use of steel shot has required thicker non-biodegradable plastic wads which are an issue on their own, just ask Denmark where they are littering the foreshore and hence also are looking at biodegradable wads Suitable for steel shot.
So we need a cost effective biodegradable wad which can handle steel shot and a few are starting to appear.
But they are expensive and only in 12ga and 20gauge despite being first used commercially in 2013 and really a tiny niche production quantity compared to the
non-biodegradable plastic wads used world wide.
Ok production may be increased but currently very few countries are looking to use them as they are not following the same agenda. They are virtual all made in the EU which we are now no longer part of, so can you see them falling over themselves to help us? The U.K. market and Denmark is tiny compared to the likes of the USA, commercially is the pain of investment to make them in all gauges and sufficient quantity worth the gain?
It must be a hard issue to technically solve the first announcement of a vegetable starch Biodegradable wad U.K. invention was was back in 2008, some 12 years ago but it obviously did not live up to expectations and never went into commercial use.
Currently lead is used with fibre biodegradable wads, which are not suitable for steel shot.
Would you be happy if we Just ignored the wad issue and littered the countryside with Non-biodegradable plastic?
To answer your question yes, I would like to see the rapid phasing out of lead ammunition and shot, however clearly it is not technically that simple and the industry has long recognised the need for a replacement of the plastic
non-biodegradable wad with a biodegradable one.
We should recognise we have the same goal that needs a grown up discussion about what is possible now and then perhaps we should learn from say the New Zealand model.
A ‘like’ is actually the same as a ‘dislike’ Paul Fisher. Thanks for clarifying thanks x
“We can fight for the status quo, we can stick our heads in the sand…”
There will of course be many in the target audience who will do just that, not least those who are already happy to shoot large numbers of pheasants and simply throw them in a hole in the ground. Hopefully there will be some saner members of the shooting industry who will see the sense in what he says and agree to give up lead.
Meanwhile the rest of us can continue to try to persuade our legislators that this should not be a voluntary decision in any case and that lead shot should be banned as soon as possible across all habitat types.
It is a damning indictment of the intransigence of the shooting industry that a supermarket communications manager is compelled to deliver a lecture to them on the obvious issues associated with using lead shot.
Excellent presentation btw. If BASC had any sense they would be head-hunting John Gregson for the post of CEO. But then again, look what happened to poor old John Swift..