Today Emma Slawinski, Chief Executive Officer of the League Against Cruel Sports is my guest blogger.  Emma has worked in social justice causes for nearly 25 years, 15 years of which has been in animal welfare. Whilst working at Compassion in World Farming a few years ago, Emma helped lead the End The Cage Age campaign, a coalition of 170 animal welfare organisations which resulted in a commitment from the European Commission to end the use of cages in farming, she also helped secure the EU ban on the routine preventative use of antibiotics in farmed animals and was involved in helping to secure the British ban on the live exports of animals for slaughter.

Since leaving Compassion, Emma has worked at the RSPCA as their Director of Policy, Prevention and Campaigns and has most recently become the CEO of The League Against Cruel Sports. 

Barren beauty

It was a breathtaking landscape, a wide-open rolling moor about 45 minutes south of Edinburgh. As we drove along a valley bottom, we followed the path of a burn with crystal clear water. Higher up the steep valley sides, we could see the moor stretching out in all directions. Having come from the bustle and business of the city the moor felt wild, natural and safe.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. 

As my day progressed, I began to recognise the impact of grouse shooting on this heavily managed landscape. Rather than a natural space for wildlife to thrive, this was a barren and hostile environment – littered with traps of all kinds – in which the numbers of grouse, and only grouse, were being pushed up by any means possible. As we walked along the banks of the burn, we saw spring traps every 100 yards, positioned on poles placed over the river, to lure animals into using them as bridges. There were so many, as soon as one fell out of sight another would appear. The ones we saw were empty – at first this felt like good news, until I realised that was likely to be because there were no animals left to trap. 

A 2024 report titled “Killing to Kill,” by the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, called this out as a ‘major moral issue’. It can’t be right to kill upwards of quarter of a million animals each year in Scotland, in order to have inflated numbers of grouse, to kill for pleasure. But at least grouse are native animals to the UK. 

Caged birds

Pheasants and red-legged partridges on the other hand are not. These animals are imported (a staggering 7 million live chicks per year, in addition to more than 20 million imported eggs) or bred in cages and then released into UK shooting estates. In total 61 million game birds are released in the UK countryside each year. For context there are ‘only’ 36 million pets in total in the UK. 61 million birds being released, in an era of bird flu and habitat destruction, is a wanton risk to take.

The farming of these birds harks back to the worst approaches to laying hen farming. I was delighted to see the Compassion in World Farming-led petition opposing the use of cages top the 100,000 mark earlier this month. They are battery cages, with birds crammed and overcrowded, with no ability to perform their natural behaviours; only for the chicks from the eggs they lay to be grown, released and then shot for ‘fun’. Sadly, around 40% may be injured rather than killed and many suffer long slow deaths from these injuries. 

Failed by regulation

As with the grouse, the management of the environment to maximise the number of game birds to shoot, and remove any natural competition or predators, is brutal. Snares and traps operate indiscriminately, often causing extreme suffering. 

The moment the pens are opened, and the game birds step out into the wild they cease to be farmed animals. They step from one set of regulatory controls to another, no longer ‘kept’ but ‘wild’ with a single stride. Game birds that are bred in cages and released into the wild encounter an extraordinary set of legal exclusions. Whilst being farmed they should be being protected under the Animal Welfare Act, but “no specific legislation regulates the breeding and rearing of birds for sporting purposes” – without specific protections, they are left open to ‘conventional practices’ which in the case of game bird breeding means the most intensive systems possible.

When they step into the wild, they should be protected by the Wildlife and Countryside Act which prevents the ‘taking or killing’ of wild birds. But predictably, game birds are excluded from this, with the only protection being an open and close date for the shooting season. But as birds farmed in cages, and then killed in their millions each year surely the Welfare of Animals at Time of Killing legislation will apply? But once again, game birds are excluded from this protection.

A totemic issue

For me, shooting is an issue right at the heart of the animal protection movement. A cruelty enacted for ‘fun’, with a ripple effect of suffering for other species and throughout the target animal’s life. It intersects between animal welfare and environment, wildlife and farmed animals, land use and regulation. Above all it causes us to ask what we consider acceptable, to look beneath the veneer of beauty in some of our most iconic landscapes and challenge ourselves to tackle the darkness beneath.  

The League Against Cruel Sports are supporting this petition led by Compassion in World Farming calling for an end to the cage age, including the caged breeding of game birds

Main Image: Game birds wearing shrouds to prevent feather pecking and cannibalism | Credit: The League Against Cruel Sports