Great British Game Week not so great after all

It’s Great British Game Week this week (Nov 20-26) and the game-shooting industry is busy promoting it.

The industry is desperate to get more people to buy game, particularly gamebirds, because there are deep concerns that supply is outstripping demand – here is a very interesting article on the subject by Charles Nodder of the National Gamekeepers Organisation.

It’s hardly surprising there’s a problem, given that an estimated 50 million non-native pheasants and red-legged partridge are released in to the countryside EVERY year and the quality of a shoot seems to be judged by an ever-increasing bag size (i.e. the number of birds shot). If gameshoots can’t sell the millions of birds that have been shot for fun then those carcasses will be carted off to landfill or simply dumped in the open or hidden in bags under hedgerows (as we’ve seen before here, here, here) which causes the industry serious damage in terms of political and public relations.

So to get more people interested in trying game the industry is going all out to promote it as healthy, natural, sustainable and nutritious. We’ve been here before, of course, and have explained why red grouse are unhealthy, unnatural and unsustainable (see here for a good overview).

[Photo of toxic red grouse by RPUK]

Unfortunately, those on Twitter who are trying to promote GB Game Week with the hashtag #GBGameweek have ignored the evidence and aren’t even warning consumers that gamebirds are shot with toxic, poisonous lead ammunition, or that all gamebirds are exempt from Government testing for toxic, poisonous lead, even though some gamebirds, when tested by researchers, have been found to contain 100 times the level of lead that would be permissible in other types of meat in the UK!

And perhaps unsurprisingly, the industry’s campaign has also failed to mention that much gamebird shooting is reliant on widespread illegal raptor persecution, including the shooting, trapping, bludgeoning and poisoning of many raptor species including golden eagles, white-tailed eagles, red kites, hen harriers, buzzards, goshawks, peregrines, marsh harriers, short-eared owls, tawny owls etc etc.

[This Marsh harrier was found with shotgun injuries next to a partridge release pen on a gameshooting estate in Yorkshire. Photo by Battle Flatts vets]

Some of us on Twitter have been helping to inform the general public about all these things the game shooting industry would prefer were kept quiet. If you’re on Twitter, join in using the hashtag #GBGameweek – our tweets are drawing widespread interest from people who previously had no idea about the carnage caused by the criminals within the Great British game shooting world.

As someone (@Mckenzie6593) tweeted this morning:

‘This #GBgameweek thing is a curious mix of recipes and people very pissed off about wildlife crime. Long live Twitter. #BanDGS’