With the countdown to the general election now on, it’s worth remembering that David Cameron wants to bring back hunting.

Hunters claim the animals they hunt are pests. This is false. Foxes help arable farmers by catching rabbits, voles and mice.

Regarding any so-called threat to livestock, a Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries report in 1983 studied an area of Powys stocked with 3,500 lambing ewes and found that “lamb losses were found to be unaffected by foxes present in the area”.

People who hunt do so for one reason: for the pleasure derived from chasing an animal to exhaustion before seeing it ripped to shreds.

A Conservative election win in May 2010 and the subsequent repeal of the Hunting Act would be a disaster for animal welfare.

Mark Richards
Halland Road, Brighton