Fox Hunting News

Horse slaughter plants in New Mexico and Missouri expect to resume processing again in the U.S. in a matter of days. “Expect” is the operating word in this ongoing battle between the opposing views. Horse slaughter plants expected to open back in July of this year after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) cleared the way, but a last-moment appeal spearheaded by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) resulted in a temporary restraining order on the plant openings. That emergency ban has now been vacated by a federal appeals court, deciding that the humane organizations “failed to meet their burden” of proof that the injunction was necessary. The way is cleared once again for the plants to open. Most media news articles continue to approach this contentious issue from the horsemeat angle. The sensitivity of many in this country to the use of horses for human consumption is powerfully emotional, and such headlines sell newspapers. However, what the media mostly ignore in their coverage is that the Government Accounting Office (GAO), Congress’s independent investigative arm, bluntly reported to Congress in 2011, that horse welfare had been harmed by their legislation that resulted in the closing of all horse processing plants in this country. Prompted by animal rights groups, Congress, in 2006, passed a law which eliminated funding to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for the inspection of horses in transit to slaughter and at slaughter facilities. Since existing law required USDA inspection, it was a back-door method of ending the slaughter of horses in the U.S. Within a year the last domestic slaughter house closed. At that time about 100,000 horses a year were being shipped to slaughter facilities. It was the ideological dream that these horses would somehow be absorbed by equine retirement facilities to spend the remainder of their natural lives in green fields tended by loving caretakers. That dream became a nightmare for horses. With retirement facilities unable to absorb even a small fraction of unwanted horses, the GAO reported that in 2010, 138,000 horses were exported to Mexico and Canada for slaughter. “The horses are traveling farther to meet the same end…in foreign slaughtering facilities where U.S. humane slaughtering protections do not apply,” said the GAO. The agency went on to say that horses are sometimes shipped in too small containers—conditions that were not allowed when USDA inspections applied. Not only have more horses been shipped greater distances under conditions unregulated by the USDA, to be slaughtered in facilities unregulated by the USDA for humane treatment, but thousands more horses are simply abandoned and neglected for lack of a commercial outlet that slaughter facilities used to provide. Horse slaughter may not be the best solution for the unwanted horse. Surely we must continue to pursue and develop all practical ideas that have come forward to solve the problem of unwanted horses in a kinder way. But the cessation of horse slaughter in the U.S. as the result of Congressional legislation has resulted in more suffering, not less, according to the GAO. Posted December 17, 2013

Hamilton Phillips Fox, ex-MFH, died at his home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore on November 26, 2013 at age 93. He was a decorated Naval veteran of World War II and enjoyed a distinguished law career in Salisbury, Maryland for nearly fifty years, starting in 1947. He served as MFH of the Wicomico Hunt (MD) for forty years, starting in 1964. Friends and colleagues describe Mr. Fox as a kind man who treated all people fairly both in his sporting and professional life. He served two terms as State’s Attorney between 1948 and 1956. Foxhunting was his favorite pastime. Mr. Fox enlisted in the Navy after the attack on Pearl Harbor and began his military service as an ensign. He commanded landing a craft ferrying tanks to the coast of Sicily in 1943. General Patton boarded his craft in Sicily to commend the crew for a job well done. Mr. Fox, who recalled hunting behind the general in Virginia as a teenager, talked foxhunting to Patton’s delight. On D-Day—arguably the most important single day of the twentieth century—Mr. Fox ferried troops and equipment to Omaha Beach in Normandy. He is mentioned in Stephen Ambrose’s definitive and best-selling history of that day, D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Battle for the Normandy Beaches.  Mr. Fox left the Navy as a First Lieutenant having won five battle stars. He was a graduate of Randolph Macon Military Academy and Washington and Lee University (1941). After the war ended, he graduated from the University of Maryland Law School in 1947. Click for more details in DelMarvaNow.com. Posted December 3, 2013

Many hunts in England that have used FaceBook to recruit first-time foxhunters have reported a doubling of interest compared to last year, according to a report in The Guardian by Fiona Harvey. More than one hundred people showed up for opening meet with the  Surrey Union Foxhounds, about seventy-five percent of whom were newcomers according to a spokeswoman for the hunt. “It’s been unbelievably successful,” she said. “We had notices locally, but mostly it was through social media.” Mark Ferguson of the Woodland Pytchley in Northamptonshire said, “Facebook has made a huge difference. It is so much easier, we can get to more and more people.” Youngsters seem to be making up a large portion of the new foxhunters. The Countryside Alliance estimates that at least 45,000 people will take to the field for opening meets this season, up about twenty-five percent from the numbers prior to enactment of the 2004 Hunting Act ban. While there has been talk about the possibility of relaxing some of the restrictions under the Hunting Act, no move has yet been made in Parliament by Prime Minister David Cameron to bring the suggested changes to a vote. Posted November 22, 2013

The Blessing of Hounds ceremony of the Aiken Hounds held at Memorial Gate in the Hitchcock Woods each Thanksgiving Day is an annual tradition in this horse-sport-minded South Carolina town. As with many hunts across the country and abroad, the ceremony represents the start of the formal season. This year Aiken Hunt members will celebrate their one hundredth blessing with an expanded liturgy in the Old English tradition to be delivered by Rev. Grant B. Wiseman, Rector at St. Thaddeus Episcopal Church. The ceremony will start at 11:00 am. As always, the public is invited, and with a larger crowd expected this year, attendees are asked to allow more time for parking and walking to Memorial Gate. The Aiken Hunt Masters are Linda Knox McLean, Larry Byers, and Joey Peace. Posted November 22, 2013

Coyote Population Rising in North Carolina Populating just the western part of North Carolina only ten years ago, coyotes are now said to be in all one hundred counties, according to an article by Michael Charbonneau for the Capitol Broadcasting Company. Nor have coyote sightings there been confined to rural areas. This year, seventeen separate sightings occurred near homes in North Raleigh, downtown in the state’s capital of Raleigh, and at Raleigh-Durham airport where two were killed in October by planes on the runway. One farmer who expects to lose at least five calves to coyotes each year recently lost twenty in one week. Coyotes are not protected in North Carolina and may be trapped or shot depending on where they live. Posted November 21, 2013

On Monday, November 4, a federal appeals court granted an emergency request by animal rights groups to temporarily block the expected reopening of horse slaughter plants in the U.S. After eleven years, horse slaughter was expected to resume as early as this week after a U.S. District judge in New Mexico last Friday threw out a lawsuit brought by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and other animal protection groups. The lawsuit by HSUS et al alleged that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), responsible for inspection of processing plants, failed to carry out environmental reviews before granting approval to the three companies scheduled to resume slaughter. The district judge in New Mexico dismissed the suit on Friday, clearing the way for horse processing to resume. HSUS et al responded on Monday, in their emergency request to the 10th Circuit, by arguing that an emergency injunction was necessary to prevent environmental harm. A two-judge panel granted the request. The anticipated resumption of horse slaughter was enabled mainly by a General Accounting Office (GAO) report to Congress that their 2006 legislation resulting in the closing of all horse processing plants in this country actually turned out to be detrimental to horse welfare. For more details, click to read Terry Baynes’s Reuters article. Posted November 5, 2013

Leith Symington Griswold, matriarch of a Maryland riding and foxhunting family, died at the age of ninety-seven, on Tuesday, October 29, 2013 at her home in Monkton. Her favorite sport was foxhunting, and she hunted not only in Maryland, but in England and Ireland as well. It was in Ireland at Molly Cusack-Smith’s Bermingham House in Tuam, County Galway where I met her and her late husband Benjamin Griswold III. Joan and I stayed there for our hunting holidays, as did the Griswold family, who all hunted enthusiastically. I remember her for her utter charm and self-possession in any situation. Ultimately, Leith and Ben purchased an old rectory in County Tipperary, where she raised roses and pursued her other passion of gardening. She was a founding trustee of the Ladew Topiary Gardens in Maryland and was honored by the Garden Club of America for her work. Leith suffered a riding accident in 1979 and switched her equine attentions to steeplechasing. Her horses won major races including the Maryland Hunt Cup. Leith was the daughter of industrialist/sportsman John Fife Symington and Arabella Hambleton Symington. She graduated from the Bryn Mawr School and attended the Peabody Conservatory of Music. She also attended a school in Rome, spoke French and Italian, and traveled extensively in those countries. Click for Jacques Kelly’s tribute in the Baltimore Sun. Posted November 5, 2013