Aim to Sustain’s Game Assurance Scheme collapses in industry’s latest self-regulation failure

The UK gamebird shooting industry’s flagship ‘Game Assurance Scheme’, which was set up to demonstrate to politicians and the public the supposed high standards of gamebird shoots and game meat through audit and certification (a bit like farming’s Red Tractor Scheme), has collapsed.

The Game Assurance Scheme was first launched in 2018 under the branding ‘British Game Alliance’ although it was immediately apparent that not all was as it should be. I pointed out that its list of supposedly ‘assured members’ included estates that had recently been at the centre of police investigations into alleged, and confirmed, wildlife crime (see here and here). The published list of ‘assured members’ was soon removed from the BGA website, never to return. Not much assurance there, then.

In October 2021 the British Game Alliance changed its named to ‘British Game Assurance’. It kept this name until December 2023 when it changed to ‘Eat Wild Ltd‘ and stopped being an ‘assurance scheme’ and instead focused on promoting game meat to the public.

In October 2023 the role of the ‘assurance scheme’ was instead transferred from the British Game Alliance to a recently formed ‘partnership’ calling itself Aim To Sustain, and the Aim to Sustain Game Assurance Scheme was born.

The Aim to Sustain partnership was formed in July 2021 and was apparently designed ‘to highlight the crucial role that sustainable game shooting plays in delivering biodiversity net gain through preserving and protecting cherished rural landscapes and a tremendous array of wildlife‘. I described it at the time as a ‘propaganda supergroup’.

The partnership included most of the usual suspects: Countryside Alliance, British Game Alliance, British Association for Shooting and Conservation, Country Land & Business Association, Game Farmers’ Association, Moorland Association, National Gamekeepers’ Organisation and Scottish Land and Estates. The Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust were acting as ‘scientific advisors’. The Scottish Gamekeepers Association was noticeably absent.

Amidst great fanfare (e.g. here) in October 2023, it was announced that the Game Assurance Scheme was being transferred to Aim to Sustain and by December 2023 it was up and running.

Aim to Sustain launched a website and set out the details of its Game Assurance Scheme. Here are some screenshots and associated files – posted here for posterity because they’ve recently all been removed from Aim to Sustain’s website.

I think it’s worth clicking on that link from the launch of the new Game Assurance Scheme in October 2023 and reading some of the quotes given at the time by the Aim to Sustain directors, because they all emphasised the political and public significance of having a Game Assurance Scheme in place to demonstrate effective self-regulation and high standards.

The Countryside Alliance later re-emphasised the ‘urgency of self-regulation‘ ahead of the general election in June 2024:

“In this political climate, the shooting sector needs to show those in power that through responsible and independently audited self-regulation, any new government-imposed regulation is unnecessary“.

The game shooting industry was under scrutiny like never before and it thought that Aim To Sustain’s Game Assurance Scheme would act as an effective firewall against the growing number of magnifying glasses being wielded by pesky campaigners who were daring to question the status quo and were rattling a few Government-building doors and windows to seek urgent and radical policy change on gamebird shooting.

Unfortunately for the industry, Aim to Sustain’s firewall might as well have been made from kerosene because the whole lost has just combusted.

Aim to Sustain’s Game Assurance Scheme lasted for just over one year. This last weekend, a blog reader sent me the following letter that the Aim to Sustain partnership had just sent out:

So it would seem the Game Assurance Scheme has collapsed because Aim to Sustain couldn’t attract sufficient numbers of estates, shoots and game farms to join and keep it financially viable.

Is that because there aren’t sufficient numbers of estates, shoots and game farms that can meet the standards needed for certification?

Are the sustainable shoots so few in number that they’re dwarfed by the number of unsustainable, irresponsible cowboys/criminals that wouldn’t stand a hope in hell’s chance of gaining accreditation?

I don’t know how many estates, shoots and game farms were audited and accredited within the 14 months the assurance scheme was being run by Aim To Sustain (total lack of transparency) but it can’t have been that many if the scheme has already collapsed. I heard there might have been around 150 but I have no way of verifying that figure. Either way, it’s obviously a teeny tiny proportion of the thousands of established shoots across the UK.

Whatever the reason for failure, it is yet another example of the game shooting industry’s inability to self-regulate, coming hot on the heels of last week’s news that the industry’s purported five-year voluntary transition away from using toxic lead ammunition has also failed spectacularly.

And it’s not just the Game Assurance Scheme that’s collapsed. If you look at the Aim to Sustain Ltd entry on Companies House there appears to have been a sudden and fascinating exit of seven Directors since January:

Rats and sinking ships comes to mind.