Chickens' Lib

by Clare Druce

  Bill was pleased to help. We agreed on August 12th, the ‘glorious twelfth’ that marks the first day of the grouse shooting season.

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  The Huddersfield Examiner of August 13th reported the event: ‘Comedy star Bill Owen (pictured) took on a more serious role in Holmfirth yesterday when he gave his support to an animal welfare petition. Bill, alias Compo in the BBC’s Last of the Summer Wine, helped to post a 50,000 signature petition from the Farm Animal Welfare Network. Posted at Holmfirth Post Office on “the glorious twelfth” the petition calls on Prince Charles, a keen grouse and pheasant shooter, to recognise the cruel exploitation involved in rearing birds for sport.’

  A week later, the situation had turned acrimonious. The Express and Chronicle of August 19th featured a retrospective photograph of our two dedicated helpers, Penny Perkins and Margaret Skinner, flanking a determined-looking Bill Owen, all three armed with large parcels of signed petitions. Under a bold heading BIRD REARING ROW HITS “WINE” SHOOT came the news that a vital filming venue had been axed. ‘Feathers are flying over Last of the Summer Wine star Bill Owen’s outspoken views on bird shooting. Incensed by Mr Owen’s views, a gamekeeper has blocked the BBC film crew from shooting scenes for the next series on valley moorland. Producer and director of the series Alan Bell said permission was withdrawn by Snailsden Moor’s head gamekeeper John Hollingworth last week only a fortnight before filming was due to start…Yorkshire Water, who own the moorland but not the shooting rights, said they are helping the BBC find another location.’

  Despite the hullabaloo, Bill refused to moderate his views. According to the paper, he continued to describe game bird shooting as ‘a devilish sport’. The producer added: ‘Bill is very sorry about the whole thing but when he believes in something he is very passionate about it.’

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  We’d known that Bill Owen was passionate about injustices towards his fellow humans and he’d told us that this ‘photo opportunity’ marked his first venture into the world of animal-related injustice. So we’d been doubly grateful for his support and we were very sad at his passing, in 1999. ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ was never to be the same without ‘Compo’.

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  Following the publicity, letters, both supportive and abusive, were published in the local paper. When a Mr W wrote in (more than once) calling us loonies and troublemakers, we decided we’d had enough. We knew our facts. We had proof of the cruelty. At our request, the Holme Valley Express agreed to host a meeting between Mr W and myself, with a view to publishing the proceedings. As the time drew near, I felt increasingly eager to meet with our angry letter-writer.

  Sadly, it turned out he was bolder on paper than in the flesh and, with no apology, failed to turn up. As far as we were concerned, Mr W was never heard of again.

  The Star too ran an article on the ‘Glorious Twelfth’, describing the foul devices employed to control game birds and featuring our petition to Prince Charles. The newspaper contacted the British Field Sports Society for its views, to be told by a spokesperson that the practices we objected to represented ‘good basic husbandry’, and that game was about as free range as food gets.

  Sixteen years later, the Veterinary Laboratories Agency in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, found staphylococcal septicaemia in pheasants submitted to them. The cause was thought to be ‘removal of hard plastic anti-pecking bits from pheasants by twisting them without cutting them first, with the resulting damage to the nasal mucosa.’ This practice was believed to be ‘sometimes responsible for introducing staphylococcal infections such as septic arthritis and tenosynovitis and this may have been a predisposing factor in this case’ (16).

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  Prince Charles’ response was disappointing. We felt we’d been moderate in our request, in limiting it to pheasant rearing. We’d not asked him to de-commission his guns. HRH’s Private Secretary, Commander Richard Aylard, thanked us for our letter of August 12th and the enclosed petitions. Apparently His Royal Highness had noted our views.

  We wrote to our supporters: ‘We feel that our “views” are not what matters, but the suffering of the birds… “Specs” deemed illegal by the Game Conservancy are readily available from a firm in Hertfordshire which operates as suppliers of game rearing equipment to Her Majesty the Queen.’

  We ended this section of our newsletter with an offer to our supporters – specs with pins (50p each inc. p&p), suggesting that samples might be displayed on street stalls. We also asked them to send the postcard of the pheasant wearing these cruel specs to Prince Charles, respectfully suggesting that he ‘looks into pheasant rearing practices’. To date, we have no reason to believe that he has.

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  Later that same year, specs with pins were found on pheasants on the Queen’s Windsor estate. The People exposed the scandal, the outcome being that the Queen directed Quadtag, the game bird equipment firm in receipt of her Royal Warrant, to stop manufacturing this device (17).

  Despite the publicity, specs with pins remained in the catalogues of other UK game supply firms for a further few years. Now, with increased bad publicity from Animal Aid as well as LACS and Chickens’ Lib, these instruments of torture are no longer advertised. But that’s not to say that gamekeepers can’t still get their hands on them.

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  As long-term listeners to The Archers, that BBC Radio 4 story of country folk, Violet and I had noticed something missing in the village gamekeeper’s routine in the woods of Ambridge. No mention ever of bits, specs or brails, let alone of PBA or of diseases necessitating antibiotic treatment. No, the birds are just fed and ‘looked after’.

  Perhaps the script is influenced by BBC Books’ 1995 publication ‘The Gamekeeper – a Year in the Glens’. There’s a telling little passage in the book where the author, Charlie Pirie, faces up to the fact that after months spent caring for the pheasants, feeding them and keeping them safe ‘like children, basically’, comes the day of the shoot.

  Not too rosy an outlook, for a gamekeeper’s children…

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  January 2000: We sent our supporters a pre-drafted letter for them to sign and post to the programme’s senior producer. The letter questioned the lack of any mention of cruel devices, and pointed out that: ‘Losses from the diseases so rife on modern estates seem not to trouble Ambridge pheasants or their keepers…in recent years the pages of Veterinary Record certainly tell a story of escalating disease patterns. Cannibalism causes heavy losses too…’ We ended with the hope that the gamekeepers of Ambridge might begin to reflect the real world. Onto each pre-drafted letter, we’d stuck a sample bit. We even lent the programme’s production team our copies of the Game Conservancy books, to prove we didn’t dream up atrocities. We received a polite postcard from one of the producers – the books had been passed around the office, and the contents noted with interest…

  But none of our efforts made a scrap of difference to the scripts. A gamekeeper’s job is still seen through rose-tinted specs. With or without pins.

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  In 2002 Chickens’ Lib was invited to attend the Farm Animal Welfare Council’s annual open meeting. While there, I suggested that the Council should report on the game bird industry. Though not regarded as bona fide ‘food animals’, game birds are supposed to be eaten so we’d decided they qualified for a FAWC Report.

  A few years were to pass until, in 2006, comments from interested parties (ranging from Chickens’ Lib to Tesco plc) were invited, to assist FAWC to make its assessment of the welfare of game birds.

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  In 2004 the League Against Cruel Sports (LACS) exposed an ominous and exceptionally cruel trend – barren and highly restrictive cages for housing breeding game birds. At Pye Hall Game Farm in Eye, Suffolk, they claimed to have found ‘overcrowding, cannibalism and a cold indifference to animal suffering’ (18). The following year, during the 2005 pheasant and partridge breeding season, Animal Aid (AA) carried out undercover filming on the premises of four major game bird companies, G&A L
eisure, in Bettws Cedewain, Wales, Heart of England Farms in Claverdon, Warwick, Hy-Fly Game Hatcheries in Poulton-le-Fylde, and Pye Hall Game Farm itself.

  All four establishments were found to be keeping groups of pheasant breeders at a ratio similar to that seen in the wild – one male to around eight females. But there any similarity to nature ends.

  Row upon row of cages stretch away into the distance, with little protection from the elements. When alarmed the trapped birds attempt to fly upwards, only to hit their heads on the cage roof, often causing severe injury (it’s known as scalping, in the gamebird industry). AA investigators found many dead birds. Among the living, head damage and severe feather wear were common. At Heart of England Farms AA filmed a bird wearing a grotesque device, somewhere between specs and a beak guard, with pins through the nasal septum (19).

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  While holidaying in Shropshire a year or two later we strayed over the border into Wales and found ourselves driving past the sign to a village that sounded familiar: Bettws Cedewain.

  ‘That’s where one of those game bird breeding places is – where Animal Aid did secret filming of the cages,’ I said (or yelled, possibly). ‘Stop the car!’

  We found a parking spot and wandered around the village, hoping to catch a glimpse of G&A Leisure’s caged birds.

  Soon we came upon a newly built hotel, both extensive and flashy, no doubt providing five star accommodation for the Guns (as those planning to take pot shots at the birds are called). Apparently Guns descend on this picturesque village from far and wide: ‘An American agency, Chris Batha of South Carolina, offers shooting jaunts on behalf of G&A to groups of eight guns. The cost is $11,840 per person, with 300 bird-targets provided on each of four days’ (20). Do these visitors to G&A Leisure, loaded in both senses, know of the squalor and cruelty hidden behind the scenes?

  We investigated the village from all angles and walked among the surrounding gently undulating hills, bathed that afternoon in warm sunshine, hoping to see something of the one thousand, six hundred and sixty cages described by Animal Aid. But the lie of the land was against us. Whenever we seemed about to reach a vantage point, a hill would intervene. The thousands of incarcerated birds were well hidden; G&A Leisure knows what it’s about.

  We did see a good many beautiful pheasants wandering alongside the hedgerows and into the road. Apart from the hotel, the only hint of big business was a gleaming new metal five-bar farm gate, firmly closed, and a notice to Keep Out on the grounds of ‘biosecurity’. How useful that term is for keeping the public at bay, and how ironic that it’s frequently associated with particularly filthy establishments.

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  The adverse publicity that followed Animal Aid’s investigations caused a split to develop in the shooting world. It seemed that the British Association for Shooting and Conservation became worried that the scandal of cages would further besmirch the image of ‘country sports’. Then came some good news for the birds.

  On March 15th 2010 DEFRA issued a new Code of Practice designed effectively to see an end to caged breeding pheasants. Animal Aid had done great work in highlighting the dreadful conditions outlined above. I’ll quote from their Summer 2010 issue of ‘Outrage’: ‘The new Code of Practice states that “all laying systems for pheasants should provide a minimum space of one square metre per bird”. Typically, caged breeding pheasants have a ninth of this space. The new requirement effectively makes the cages economically and logistically impractical. Sadly, the new Code does nothing for partridges, since the new space allowance per bird for them is already met by the existing system.’

  Then in its January issue Poultry World reported: ‘Readers should be aware that an outright ban on laying cages – barren and enriched – is being canvassed by DEFRA in a public consultation document. The consultation relates only to game birds, but the poultry industry may find the suggestion alarming nonetheless’. (Obviously, enriched cages for laying hens had sprung to poultry keepers’ minds.)

  How wonderful, we thought, all those redundant game bird cages! But any celebration on behalf of breeding pheasants was to be short-lived. Soon after the 2010 general election, the Tory/Lib Dem coalition wiped out the new Code, in what Animal Aid called ‘a shameful government U-turn’. The incoming government appointed a keen advocate of country sports, James (Jim) Paice, as DEFRA’s Minister of State. According to Animal Aid, within a month of taking up his new role Mr Paice had withdrawn the new Code of Practice and chaired an emergency meeting in which he succeeded in pushing through a watered-down version. A so-called ‘enriched’ cage would be allowed in place of the barren cage.

  And what does this mean in terms of the welfare of the breeding birds? It means the birds will have a perch and a plastic curtain to afford a little privacy for egg laying. In the words of AA’s Kate Fowler: ‘Animal Aid has filmed these “enriched” cages on several occasions and can confirm that they are just as bleak and oppressive as the non-enriched version.’

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  Most of our knowledge about game birds has been based on practices in the UK, but while writing this chapter I’ve looked at various websites. One day I lit upon a hauntingly sad image from America. A sturdy leather harness encircles a live pheasant as she lies helpless on the grass, denied any hope of movement, let alone escape. The device comes in different sizes to suit different types of birds, including the tiny quail, and is an aid for training gun dogs (21).

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  Our comments to the FAWC inquiry into the game bird industry, dated May 2007, included a list of the many diseases we believed to be caused by stressful rearing methods. For example, ascites, a disease originally occurring in poultry kept at high altitudes but now common throughout the broiler industry and among factory-farmed pheasants (22). Ascites manifests itself by an accumulation of fluid in the abdominal cavity, often associated with liver disease, disturbances of the blood circulation and heart trouble. Factory farmed broilers, factory farmed pheasants – the similarities in lifestyle are striking, though the abuses endured by game birds are more extreme, and go on for longer.

  We quoted five references from Veterinary Record to ataxia, a disease caused by lesions throughout the nervous system, including the brain. Ataxia has only recently been identified in pheasants. Affected birds stagger, as if drunk.

  We drew attention to blindness in pheasants, a condition ‘noted in pheasant since the 1980s but its aetiology is unknown’ (23).

  We pointed out that tumours in pheasants, especially around the eyes, are frequently noted in Veterinary Record as being on the increase (24).

  We stated that life-saving antibiotics vital to human medicine are squandered on game birds, needed only because of unacceptable conditions.

  We observed that it is when previously bitted and confined birds are moved into ‘release pens’ that many diseases show up. We put this down to the stress of bit removal, plus the catching process, followed by transport (which may be long-distance). Salmonellas, infectious sinusitis, E Coli septicaemia, avian TB, rotavirus infections and a host of other problems emerge at this time in the birds’ short lives, and it’s then that gamekeepers turn to their arsenals of drugs.

  Enrofloxacin (a fluoroquinolone) is used. The danger to the human population of over-use of this family of drugs is well documented (25). Then there is erythromycin, a broad-spectrum antibiotic used to treat a wide range of bacterial infections in the human population, marketed for animals as Tylosin (and previously used as a growth-promoter). This drug is now in receipt of full authorisation for use throughout the EU, and recommended by the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC) for the treatment of mycoplasmosis, or ‘bulgy eye’. For a graphic image of a pheasant suffering from this devastating condition, see BASC’s website (26).

  We concluded: ‘It is shocking that the pheasant, a bird regarded by most as a “natural” food, is contributing to the threat of a return to the “pre-antibiotic era”, the time when TB, a childish ailment, a chest infection,
an infected insect bite, and countless other ailments, both major and minor, carried with them the threat of premature death.’

  Possible residues of antibiotics in the meat of game birds are perhaps of less concern than the increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the environment.

  Not all game birds are eaten: large numbers of them die for sport alone. ‘Pheasants are eatable, but hardly anybody eats them…Landowners say they cannot even give them away, and huge numbers of them end up buried in mass graves.’ (27)

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  In 2007 DEFRA’s two-year long project The effects of the application of bits and spectacles in game birds (Code- AW1301) made depressing reading. In some kind of denial, I suppose, DEFRA stated that ‘Despite [bits’] widespread use, the effect of these anti-feather pecking devices on the welfare of pheasants has received little attention.’ Not true. Way back in 1985, Olaf Swarbrick, a vet specialising in poultry, had contributed a lengthy article to Veterinary Record (Vol 116: 610-617) entitled Pheasant rearing: associated husbandry and disease problems. Too bad that no attention was paid to these ‘problems’ highlighted more than a quarter of a century ago. And it seems DEFRA’s in no hurry even now – page 37 of the Project states: ‘Further studies are required to determine the behavioural needs and preferences of captive pheasants.’

  Five years on, and DEFRA had no hard figures to accompany their ‘studies’, which may by now be ongoing. On July 13th 2012 Jason McCartney asked the following Parliamentary Question, only to receive a disappointing reply:

  Jason McCartney (Colne Valley): To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many pheasants are reared for sport annually; and what proportion of them are (a) beak trimmed and (b) fitted with bits.{115661}

  Mr Richard Benyon: DEFRA does not hold information relating to the number of pheasants reared for sport annually, or the proportion of them that are beak trimmed or fitted with bits.

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  In November 2008 FAWC published its ‘Opinion on the Welfare of Farmed Gamebirds’. FAWC describes its Opinions as ‘...short reports to Government on contemporary topics relating to farm animal welfare. They are a new format of advice to government and were introduced in 2007…They may highlight particular concerns and indicate issues for further consideration.’