16/05/2023
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Today's Daily Telegraph: Duchess of Rutland says "Thérèse Coffey... has some explaining to do" Below is an extract from the Daily Telegraph 9 May 2023
“Westminster must listen to farmers, not armchair experts”
By Rachel Emma Manners, the Duchess of Rutland
"… Modern Wales has a huge problem with dog attacks. The Telegraph has reported that Welsh sheep farmers suffer four times more attacks and shoot three times more dogs than their counterparts in the rest of the UK.
Why is there such a huge problem in Wales? Last year, 100 farmers, including Gareth Wyn Jones, suggested it was because the country banned the training of dogs with e-collars in 2010. They pointed to the large volume of research showing these collars are very effective at making dogs wary of approaching sheep. That is important because dogs are forever escaping from their owners.
In Scotland, they recently raised the fine for owners who do not keep their dogs on leads to £40,000 and that has not solved the problem. Why? Because the biggest problem is training the dogs, not the owners.
The National Sheep Association says bans on e-collar training are “utterly irresponsible”, so guess what the environment department in England has just promised to do? Ban them as well.
Hundreds of thousands of responsible owners use these devices to train their dogs because they do not want farmers shooting them. They believe a short startle is far better than being shot. And, for the record, the shock from e-collars is 3,000 times less powerful than some livestock fences.
Yet the most shocking thing about this matter is that Thérèse Coffey, the Environment Secretary behind this latest attempt to ban e-collar training, used one on her own dog. She has some explaining to do.
Westminster has to stop ignoring farmers. We are custodians - practical people who have managed the balance of nature over the centuries. Both sides of my family have been farming the Welsh Marches since the time of Charles I. It is in our DNA.
We respect the role of all species, yet the armchair experts of London cannot stop interfering. They lack knowledge, they lack science, and they are creating impossible pressures on country people and animals."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/09/hunting-ban-has-caused-catastrophic-decline-of-foxes/
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