From Nigel Burke
Your editorial was correct to say that banning fox hunting would increase
rural unemployment
(17 July, p 3).
Between fifteen and sixteen thousand jobs
depend on hunting. This is not a guess; the figures are from Countryside
Sports: Their Economic, Social and Conservation Significance, the 1997
report by Cobham Resource Consultants, a firm whose clients include the World
Bank, the European Union and Britain’s Countryside Agency.
The recent letter from the International Fund for Animal Welfare cited a
report by economist Neil Ward as concluding that “large numbers of jobs will
automatically be lost following a ban” (14 August, p 56). However, it failed to
reproduce Ward’s italicised emphasis on the word “automatically”. This
considerably changes the sense of Ward’s conclusions.
nigel-burke@countryside-alliance.org
