Letters to the Editor | 10 September 2005

RSPCA is off target

Simon Heffer was right to warn about the danger to shooting, and Charles Moore was equally right last week (The Spectator’s Notes, 3 September) to point to the real issues that shooters must address. But whatever its position on shooting, it is clear that the RSPCA has already utterly corrupted the public’s understanding of what constitutes real animal welfare. Their aggressive campaign to ban hunting seduced many members of the general public into thinking that fox-hunting is the worst form of animal cruelty imaginable. Many people now assume that they are ethical animal lovers just because they oppose hunting. At the same time they quite cheerfully keep their dogs locked away in tower blocks or buy battery chickens at £2.50 from Tesco.

By focusing so much condemnation on the single — and relatively unimportant — issue of hunting, the RSPCA has spent less time and effort than it should have done on talking about genuine cases of animal cruelty.