It is killing season. November to March, fields will be bloodied, and terror will reign.
Horses will thunder, while horns scream a century’s old call: to chase, to hurt, to maim.
Men with spades dig into dens to brutalise, butcher and brawl.
Foxes, now broken, souls needlessly stolen away.
Night sweeps in with a stinging silence, holding vigil with nothing to say.
Legalised Mass Slaughter
Despite their supposed affection for animals, a significant portion of the English population has a deep and violent relationship with the non-human species. According to vegan charity Viva each year the UK slaughters and consumes around 1.2 billion land animals. This includes approximately 1 billion chickens, 15 million turkeys, 14 million sheep, 10 million pigs and 3 million cattle. That equates to a lot of killing.
Equally worrying is the average age of what is being killed. Chickens are slaughtered at six weeks (vs an average life span of eight years), turkeys between 8 – 26 weeks (vs an average life span of ten years), ducks at a mere seven weeks (average life fifteen years), pigs at six months (average life fifteen years) and cows at two years (vs an average life span of twenty years). The level and type of violence used in the killing of animals is sadistic. In January and February 2021, the Animal Justice Project carried out a two-month investigation into G. & G. B. Hewitt slaughterhouse in Cheshire.
They recorded over 200 hours of video footage; a summary of their findings can be seen here: Animal Justice exposé film (Warning: the footage is distressing. It shows acts of violence and cruelty and scenes of animals being killed).
Their findings are not atypical, and it appears much of the population has a pathological relationship with animals.
A Twisted History of Violence Against Animals
Shakespeare wrote Macbeth in 1606 and included dialogue typical of the day. Read it with an informed eye and you will pick up on clues of what passed as entertainment 400 years ago.
“Have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly. But, bear-like, I must fight the course.”
“Bear-like” is an overt reference to the popular so-called sport of bear-baiting, which would remain legal in England until the 19th century. The cruel spectacle took place in a dug-out and involved chaining a bear to a stake. Tethered, the bear had limited mobility as a pack of dogs was let loose to attack it until it died. Amongst the most horrendous noises and gruesome blood-soaked pits, spectators would wager how many dogs would be killed before the bear would succumb to its injuries. Despite its sadistic nature bear-baiting attracted royalty (including Queen Elizabeth I and King James I, the latter once hosting a private show involving a polar bear) and proved a popular alternative to England’s theatres. Perhaps Shakespeare’s reference was as much in exasperation as it was social commentary.
Bears weren’t alone in being abused. Ponies, with monkeys tied to their backs, were baited, as were bulls, who on occasion had their noses blown full of pepper to further ‘arouse’ them. In 1835, the Humane Act was introduced outlawing all baiting and dogfighting. Two streets in London where baiting took place, Bear Gardens and Bear Lane, remain markers of this dark and perverse period in our relationship with animals.
Hugo – Master of Fox Hounds
Unfortunately, the pain and suffering foxes experienced at the hands of humans didn’t stop in 1835 – in fact, it continues until today.
Fox hunting, or the tracking, chasing (to the point of exhaustion), and killing (by a pack of frenzied hounds), dates to the early 16th century. The earliest hunt is assumed to have taken place in Norfolk around 1530, with the first pack of dogs specifically trained to hunt and kill foxes occurring sometime in the early 1600s. By the late 17th century, fox hunting was waning. Land enclosures were becoming popular, deer forests were being cleared and arable land was increasing. In addition, the industrial revolution introduced a massive network of roads and canals permanently altering the landscape.
Hugo Meynell was a rich landowner, an MP, and is the father of modern fox hunting. He had more time on his hands than compassion in his soul. Instead of applying himself to the nation’s woes, administering government and improving the lot of voters, he spent it breathing new life into the fox hunting fraternity. A practice that should have been outlawed for its savagery alongside baiting, was instead given a makeover by Meynell – it became an elitist so-called sport, full of fake pomp and self-congratulating ceremony, that afforded participants a peculiar class status in an Alice-in-Wonderland world. Meynell, acting like a scientist out of control, would go on to develop new horse and hound breeds better suited to fox hunting, and in 1753 crowned himself Master of Fox Hounds for the Quorn Hunt in Leicestershire, a role he would hold for forty-seven years.
Meynell married twice, and his only son, also called Hugo, died in an 1810 hunting fall.
The Hunting Act 2004
For the next 250 years foxes were afforded little to no legal protection. Unrestrained cruelty was visited on them as they were savaged to death in the name of entertainment.
The League Against Cruel Sports shared “Autopsies reveal hunted foxes are not killed quickly but endure numerous bites and tears to their flanks and hindquarters – causing enormous suffering before death.”
When foxes escape the hounds, by burrowing underground, they are flushed out by terriers released into the hole entrances.
The League Against Cruel Sports continued: “Foxes forced to face terriers underground can suffer injuries to the face, head, and neck.”
When terriers aren’t used, spades and shovels are. Foxes are dug out and thrown to waiting hounds for a certain and painful death.
This was all meant to change in 2004 when the then Labour government introduced the Hunting Act, which banned the hunting of wild mammals with dogs. But there were a couple of disappointing exemptions: firstly, dogs could be used to flush out ‘an unidentified wild mammal,’ secondly, the act didn’t affect ‘drag or trail hunting’ where dogs follow an artificially laid scent and may on occasion come across a fox. In essence, it isn’t illegal if the hunt’s hounds ‘accidently’ find a fox. The hunt is supposed to help free the fox in such situations but evidence from anti-hunt groups and observers has yet to confirm this happens.
Time to Close the Loop Holes
Protect the Wild released an alarming report in February of this year titled: “Hunting: A Case for Change.” The report is an indictment of the hunting associations and institutions across England, and the report points an accusing finger:
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- 46% of trail hunts were caught chasing or killing foxes
- As many as 5,000 foxes were either chased or killed by hunts
- There were over 200 instances of hunt violence
- There were almost 600 reported traffic and trespass offences related to hunts
- Police attended almost 350 hunting activities
The report was followed by an open letter to Steve Reed, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, in October. Signatories included Rob Pownall, founder of Protect the Wild, Dame Judi Dench and Ricky Gervais. The letter spoke to the realities of what is currently happening:
“It has become clear that hunters have sought to systematically undermine the [Hunting] Act via the deceitful pretext of “trail hunting” – a practice Labour pledged to put an end to in its election manifesto. Hunts continue to operate across the country, frequently breaking the law by chasing and killing wild mammals under the guise of trail hunting or using loopholes and exemptions to evade prosecution.”
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The Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA) was formed in 1963 and stands at the vanguard in the fight to end fox hunting completely and permanently. Their volunteers show up ‘week in, week out, in the frost, snow, rain and mud’ to disrupt hunts, and protect life. It isn’t easy work, and despite doing nothing illegal, they are frequently abused by the hunt. Undeterred, they remain committed to stopping fox hunting, including by enforcing the law where the government and police fail to.
An HSA spokesperson shares: “All the evidence shows, all the footage we gather shows, that several times every week they’re [the hunts] just hunting foxes as they always were.”
For too long we have treated human-on-animal violence as an acceptable norm, attempting to legitimise it by dressing it in tradition or as an unquestionable necessity. In reality our relationship with animals is severely dysfunctional. We are predators – violent, vicious, murderous predators.
Activist and author Ed Winters recounts a conversation during which he was told: ‘to the animals we are the devils of this planet, and this world is their hell, a place of subjugation and pain.’
For the next five months England’s green pastures will echo with shrieks of terror and torture as foxes are chased to exhaustion and mauled to death.
©2024 Sul Nowroz – Real Media staff writer
