Ethical arguments for hunting fail to justify shooting animals
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Version 0 of 1. Readers are unconvinced by a ‘liberal’ hunter’s line of defence and consider the wider ethics of killing for food This long pro-hunting piece (I’m a liberal who loves hunting. Allow me to change your mind, 31 August) is full of the usual defences: that hunters are the ones who really care about wildlife and who protect it with their taxes and their efforts, and that hunting is a more ethical and humane means of consuming meat than store-bought factory-farmed. It conveniently overlooks the fact that hunters lobby government wildlife offices, hunters manage wildlife populations so that there is always a surplus of the kinds of animals they want to kill, and that hunters hold vast (usually right-leaning) political power in the US. And the fact is that hunters not only eat their “reverential” kills but also readily eat the “ethically inferior” often factory-farmed meat; the author makes brief mention of that in admitting her weakness for store-bought poultry. Frankly, hunted meat may normally be less cruel than meat produced by animal agriculture, but there is overlap in their government lobbying efforts – for example, both want wild horses removed from public lands and both want hunting seasons on wild predators such as wolves and bears.Kim BartlettPresident, Animal People Inc If you must murder, murder softly (or so runs Jessica Reed’s defence of hunting). Forgive me for being dissatisfied with this defence. For it leaves unanswered the crucial question: why must you murder at all?Sasha ArridgeOxford |