A recent front page article concerned the saving of six lobsters from certain death to a life in a glass cage to be stared at until death.  Though I am quite sure the said lobsters far prefer this to being boiled alive for the enjoyment of someone able to afford the luxury, no one even uttered a word.

With 216 chicken farms on the island of Malta and 52 on the neighbouring islands of Gozo, a total of 97.549 million eggs are laid and millions of chickens slaughtered annually for local consumption, still no one utters a word.

The production of meat and the landing of fish annually run into tons and yet, apart from those amongst us that are queasy about eating meat, all are satisfied with the convenient status quo.

Do we object to animals we have “domesticated” or the fish we eat not being given the chance to reproduce? Apart from our interest that such animals are not eaten to extinction everyone seems complacent and few if any ever go hysterical about the issue or attempt to put an end to such industries.

However this is not so when it comes to our birds, or rather more so to those two species of wild birds that can be legally hunted in our little island in spring thanks to a concession granted by the European Courts. Our local bird protectionists Birdlife Malta, that deceitfully claim to tolerate hunting in autumn, state spring hunting is “not ethical” and after what it terms as “government indifference”, it has joined a coalition of like minded societies in order to put an end to this legal practice which any unprejudiced government rightly permits.

Concealing the fact that within the EU the shooting of birds, destruction of nests and the taking of eggs is common practice during spring justified under derogation, they attempt to indoctrinate the Maltese public with pure fabrications aimed at suiting their own anti hunting purposes.

Asking for support on the basis that “spring hunting is just unethical to say the least, because you are killing birds before even giving them the change to reproduce”. Why should the public differentiate between the domesticated animals consumed that are not even given a chance to breed or the tonnage of fish we land that is bursting with roe and the few turtle dove and quail we hunt.

If anyone’s decision to ban spring hunting is based on ethics due to birds being on their way to breed, the justification for this concession, which only Birdlife contradict, is given by the European Courts after due consideration to Malta’s bird migration peculiarities and to the fact that 6 million possible breeders of these same two species are shot annually throughout the EU, making the maximum of 16,000 conceded to Malta during spring hunting insignificant and subsequently sustainable.

If on the other hand some are influenced by all the hogwash aimed at discrediting hunters that Birdlife Malta so gladly disseminates, then all who object to my quota of 4 birds for the pot every spring season and yet feast on the meat and fish provided by our industries, are nothing but hypocrites. Since whether shot, butchered, decapitated, hooked or netted the matter of ethics still remains the same.

Mark Mifsud Bonnici

President