Ethical arguments for hunting fail to justify shooting animals | Letters

Readers are unconvinced by a ‘liberal’ hunter’s line of defence and consider the wider ethics of killing for food

This long pro-hunting piece (I’m a liberal who loves hunting. Allow me to change your mind, 31 August) is full of the usual defences: that hunters are the ones who really care about wildlife and who protect it with their taxes and their efforts, and that hunting is a more ethical and humane means of consuming meat than store-bought factory-farmed. It conveniently overlooks the fact that hunters lobby government wildlife offices, hunters manage wildlife populations so that there is always a surplus of the kinds of animals they want to kill, and that hunters hold vast (usually right-leaning) political power in the US.

And the fact is that hunters not only eat their “reverential” kills but also readily eat the “ethically inferior” often factory-farmed meat; the author makes brief mention of that in admitting her weakness for store-bought poultry. Frankly, hunted meat may normally be less cruel than meat produced by animal agriculture, but there is overlap in their government lobbying efforts – for example, both want wild horses removed from public lands and both want hunting seasons on wild predators such as wolves and bears.
Kim Bartlett
President, Animal People Inc