barney white-spunner

Stung by criticism of the staggering amount of money—£326,000—spent to prosecute the Heythrop hunt for violations of the Hunting Act, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) is attempting to repair relations with the British countryside. (See earlier, related FHL article.) The Society has proposed the establishment of a new self-regulating hunting association—an independent trial and drag hunt association—that would open the country to riders and hounds following drag lines, or laid scents. Sir Barney White-Spunner, executive chairman of the Countryside Alliance, responded, “We are quite happy to talk to the RSPCA in the interests of animal welfare when they drop their increasingly radical and politicised animal rights agenda.” White-Spunner’s response was interesting in that it articulates a distinction which eludes many people: that animal welfare and animal rights are two very different philosophies. While animal welfare strives to care for all animals with compassion and enhance the well-being of all species, animal rights seeks to end man’s dominion over animals and endow them with the same rights as humans. Click to read Stuart Winter’s complete article in The Express. Posted July 22, 2013

That’s the view of Barney White-Spunner, Executive Chairman of the Countryside Alliance. “Hunting remains in good heart…and support is strong,” he wrote in the Alliance’s latest newsletter. After seven years under the law, White-Spunner claims that eighty-six percent of all hunts in England have the same number or more members and most feel higher or at least the same local support as before. The Act failed spectacularly, he said, because it was more of an attack on rural people than an attempt to improve animal welfare. Although members of the Crawley and Horsham Foxhounds were found guilty recently under the Act and were fined, statistics since the Act’s passage show few convictions and much police time wasted. “A damning indictment of the expensive and failed Hunting Act,” said Alice Barnard, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance. The Act’s history has reinvigorated calls from pro-hunters to scrap the “pointless” legislation. Read a more detailed review in Kimberley Middleton’s article in The Argus. Posted November 19, 2012