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impression that the phrase ended with a full stop. His hon. Friends
murmured their agreement. As [Peter Brooke] said, there is no full stop—it is
a semicolon. The sentence continues: 'but it should be stressed that this is
against a background of widespread fox control by farmers.' The document
goes on: 'Foxes can cause serious local problems for individual farmers and
the Ministry therefore considers that foxes do need to be controlled to
minimise lamb losses.'
(Sir Brian Mawhinney,
Hansard,
301, 28 November 1997: col. 1242)
Significantly, though, while summative statements lifted from scientific reports were
repeated with a weight of authority, very rarely were any actual figures quoted on
the scale of farm-stock losses to foxes. No such references were made during the
parliamentary debate, and whilst the BFSS (1995) offers that 'if only 2 [per cent] of
a lamb crop is lost to foxes, this means that a typical hill farm with 1,200 ewes will
lose 31 lambs, a considerable blow to a marginal hill farmer,' it is rather more vague
on losses of pigs and poultry: 'Free-range poultry and piglets are frequent victims.'
What is claimed as 'scientific evidence' is therefore often highly anecdotal in its nature.
What is reported is not that scientific research shows that foxes are pests to farmers,
but that farmers
perceive
them to be pests:
I immensely enjoyed, both for its scholarship and its narrative, David
Macdonald's 'Running with the Fox', published in 1987…. It is a tribute to
Mr Macdonald that his relations with farmers were so good, but it comes
forcefully and vividly through his narrative that the farming community were
overall implacably opposed to the fox as a pest.
(Peter Brooke,
Hansard,
301, 28 November 1997: col. 1231)
The logic of this argument was extended by the Wildlife Network, a group founded
by a former director of the League Against Cruel Sports which campaigns for
hunting to be reformed and regulated, not banned. The Wildlife Network lays claim
to be the true representative of the fox, as the only organisation to put the animal's
interests first. Thus, in a leaflet entitled
Putting the Fox
First,
it argued that, whilst
scientific studies did not necessarily show that foxes were a major pest, if farmers
perceived them to be a pest then farmers would hunt foxes by one means or
another:
Most farmers—especially hill farmers—would say yes, the fox is a pest…. [I]f
landowners and farmers
believe
that foxes are vermin—and banning hunts
will do nothing to change that perception—they will continue to kill them or
have them killed.
(Wildlife Network 1997)
As such, they concluded that the 'Wildlife Network believes that for the fox's sake,
hunting with hounds should be reformed, not banned.'
