Schedule 1 - Exempt Hunting
Hunting Bill
3:15 pm
Mr Paul Holmes (Chesterfield, Liberal Democrat)
Hunters could genuinely or spuriously argue that they had pursued and killed a moulting fox because they had mistaken it for a fox with mange. The word ''disease'' provides a loophole because it is so vague. It has to be questioned how far dogs, whether it is 40 hounds or two labradors, can distinguish and ignore the scent of a healthy animal and only follow the scent trail of the target diseased or injured animal, which is supposedly being pursued under paragraph 7 of schedule 1.
Hunts are counter-productive because they scatter groups of mangy foxes—we are told that scattering foxes is one of the virtues of hunts—which spreads disease rather than containing or eradicating it in a specific area. The ineffectiveness of hunting with hounds to control disease was shown in the mange epidemic that spread through the Mendip farmers hunt country to infect the Bristol fox population, killing an estimated 97 per cent. of foxes in Bristol between 1994 and 1996. As well as avoiding confusion
and legal wrangling over definitions of disease, humane traps, which caught 9,000 foxes in London last year, would be more effective than dogs in dealing with diseased animals. One could catch, identify and treat or humanely kill diseased animals. Paragraph 7 deals with diseased animals as opposed to general hunting.