The Lead Ammunition Group was set up in April 2010 and has made pitifully slow progress. The latest minutes of the group include this short statement: ‘The group received a presentation by Dr Ruth Cromie on the WWT Wildlife Health Unit compliance monitoring investigation and perceived barriers to behaviour change. The study results suggest that…
Category: LEAD AMMUNITION
A Waitrose near you – if you live in Malmesbury
I’ve been doing a few bits of work for a consultancy which, in turn, is advising the John Lewis Partnership (which includes my local Waitrose), on how to make their business, and particularly their supermarket sites, better for wildlife. My role is to be an external challenge to the thinking – and that’s one I’m…
M&S – a response
This response from M&S at 1653 this afternoon – just so that you know I haven’t been sitting on it. It seems that M&S are beginning to get their heads around these matters. No promise to do anything about labelling on the issues surrounding lead. I suggest that either M&S label all their shot game…
M&S, the grouse, the lead and the hen harriers
I am a fan of Marks and Spencer (M&S) – but maybe that is going to change. I am signed up to their email newsletter (which only yesterday was telling me about offers on champagne and lingerie – how sadly they misread my lifestyle!), I tend to seek out their stores in London to buy…
Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill – the simple-minded
It’s the weekend of the Game Fair, so spare a thought for all those people walking around in tweed in this hot weather – although you’d, maybe, think they had more sense. There will be a lot of talk about lead ammunition – it’s a big thing this Game Fair. The shooting organisations are belatedly…
Maybe not the biggest surprise ever…
Yesterday’s Today programme (at around 0639 and 0812) disclosed that high lead levels can make us more aggressive. We know that ‘Lead damages the brain’ and ‘this is why there is a drive to keep lead levels very low and to keep lead levels in children particularly low’. Hmmm. Makes you wonder doesn’t it? Another…
BASC and Countryside Alliance – the chocolate scare
You may remember that the Food Standards Agency recently updated its advice on eating game shot with lead. And you may remember that BASC (see link) and the Countryside Alliance (see link) trotted out some outrageous nonsense about there being more lead in chocolate than in the meat of game that had been shot with…
BASC, Countryside Alliance and the chocolate
It is now over a week since I pointed out that the statements by BASC and the Countryside Alliance on the relative amounts of lead in chocolate and game meat are incorrect. Whereas these rash statements may have originally been made in error they remain on the BASC and CA websites: BASC says ‘Pound for…
Guest Blog – Christopher Graffius (BASC) Lead Shot
Christopher Graffius is the Director of Communications at the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC). He enjoys shooting and fishing and goes wildfowling on the Dee estuary and shoots game in North Wales. Mark Avery has invited me to contribute a “guest blog”. I’m happy to do so because I’m convinced that interaction between…
A couple of lessons
I’d quite like to write a book entitled ‘Advice to a young advocate’ which would give tips on how to influence the political system. I’d not be the right person to write all of it so I’d need a few co-authors too – I wonder what Tony Juniper would think of the idea. There are…