Pain and death

I'm opposed to blood sports - always have been, and, had you asked me anytime up until a couple of days ago I would have said that I always will be.  However, I've just heard an interview that has made me think.



Sir Mark Prescott is a racehorse trainer, exceptionally bright and articulate, a tad eccentric, and a big fan of hare coursing and bull-fighting.  Interviewed on Racing UK he made a comment to the following effect.  The difference between the countryman and the town dweller is that the countryman worries about suffering, whereas his urban counterpart worries about death.  Sharp, indignant intake of breath from me, and probably from you too.

He then went on to say that the countryside is a cruel place, and that death is a fact of life on a farm - the dogs are working animals and when they can no longer work are despatched, and all of the stock on the farm is bred to either be slaughtered, or used until their working life is done.  Farmers accept death, and those of us that are meat-eaters sign up to that contract.  What a farmer doesn't like is to see an animal suffering - the old horse gets shot, the sheepdog that can no longer work gets killed, and so on.  During the Foot and Mouth crisis farmers wept to see their herds being killed, even though they knew that was to be the animals' eventual fate - it was the suffering that upset them so.  However, the town-dweller is happy to get the vet to keep their old blind dog alive, even when he's bumping into the furniture, or keep their rabbit in a tiny hutch, remove their cat's claws so it can't hunt, and so on - they are happy to let their pet suffer because they can't cope with death.

He then went on to argue that there isn't that much between what he calls the 'rational anti' and the hunting enthusiast - both worry about suffering.  The anti worries that a hare might be torn apart by a greyhound, and the hunter worries about hares dying a slow, painful death in a field when it can no longer run.  The fact that intrigued me most is that the previous three heads of the League Against Cruel Sport all came to accept that hare coursing was, on balance, better for the welfare of hares than a ban would be!  When Sir Mark was an advisor to a programme about hares, the producer was staggered to find that the leading authority on hares and their habitat was the man who ran the Waterloo Cup - the premier hare coursing event in Britain.  The man who was most involved with hare conservation also set his dogs to chase them!  He knew, said Prescott, that the very few that got caught by the dogs were the ones that were the weak ones and which would, in any rate, shortly die - Darwin had a thing or two to say on that subject.



Am I now a blood sports fan?  No, of course not.  Am I now as violently opposed to them as I once was?  No, I'm not - Prescott's comments have given me cause to reflect on my position.