This story about a Greylag Goose cull on Orkney caught my eye (largely because someone sent it to me – thank you!). I don’t know enough about the reasons behind the cull to comment on whether it is the least bit sensible but I was interested to see that the goose carcasses were to be…
Category: LEAD AMMUNITION
GWCT comes clean on lead
The move by Waitrose to require its game suppliers to supply game meat that has not been shot with lead ammunition from the 2020/21 shooting season is likely to have considerable knock-on impacts. The GWCT is the leading scientific authority used by the shooting industry and, for example, restaurants that sell game. For example, when…
British Game and Lead Alliance
The British Game Alliance has posted a statement on their website about Waitrose’s very sensible position on lead ammunition – here it is. It’s all a bit feeble. They can’t criticise Waitrose and they can’t criticise the Food Standards Authority so they say – not very much at all. But what they should be saying…
Is your MP in this list?
The MPs (and peers) above added their support to a letter in support of the British Game Alliance. You can read the letter here. I haven’t checked the peers but all the MPs are Tories (plus Jim Shannon DUP). I don’t have any problem with their doing this, nor really with the content of the…
Yorkshire mum may not be doing the right thing by her children.
I blame the government, particularly Liz Truss (who dismissed the Lead Ammunition Group‘s report), the Food Standards Agency (chaired by a grouse moor owner, for not publicising their advice) and, of course, the shooting industry (who have known of the health risks of game meat shot with lead ammunition for years and years and years…
Waitrose drops lead from game meat sales
See this piece in The Guardian. Well done to Waitrose who, eventually, have taken a lead on lead. By the 2020/21 shooting season all game will be lead-free in Waitrose. As well as giving Waitrose massive credit for this move, much credit also needs to go to those scientists and members of the Lead Ammunition…
A conversation about lead levels
I was talking to a young-ish woman a while back (I’d guess she was in her 30s) in a social context and the subject of game meat came up, pretty much by chance. Now I don’t know this woman well, it was the first time we’d met, and we may never meet again, but I’m…
Lead ammunition – what do shooters really think?
This is an interesting paper which looks at the attitudes of a small sample (30) of male shooters to lead ammunition. It’s something called a Q-study – something unfamiliar to me. As I understand it, the study chose the group of respondents not to be representative of the shooting community, but in fact to represent…
EDM 1963 – progress, but very slow progress
A total of 27 MPs have put their names to EDM 1963 on lead ammunition. That’s respectable, but unimpressive. My MP will never sign it – might yours? Please ask them. The score sheet is: Green Party, 1; Conservative Party, 1; Independent, 1; the Independent Group, 1; SNP, 4; Liberal Democrat, 4; Labour, 15
Lead – well done Anglian Water
Anglian Water think that it is worth putting cards like this through their customers’ letterboxes (even though the pipes are the customers’ responsibility not the water company). Good for them! Whereas almost no supermarkets label the lead-laden game meat that they sell specifically for human consumption, and those that do get the wording badly wrong…