Until this spring, when the McFall Bill, also known as the Wild Mammal (Protection) Bill, was passed by Parliament, kicking hedgehogs was a completely legal pastime, and many instances have indeed been reported. Some other examples from the huge file of once legal cruelty now made illegal by the new bill, include the nailing of a live squirrel to the branch of a tree, and cutting off the ears of a howling fox. In fact, only a few British wild animals - those considered endangered species - were previously safeguarded by animal welfare legisilation against cruelty.
84 year old Mr. Alexander Peat will be the first to feel the heat of the McFall bill. He was not inspired by football, however. He insists that he thought the hedgehog he kicked was a rat, the Daily Mail reported on Saturday, June 22. According to eyewitnesses, his clearance sent the animal four feet into the air and 20 feet from the spot. The kick caused the hedgehog severe spinal injuries and it had to be put down after first being taken care of by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The Wildlife Hospital Trust condemned Mr Peat’s actions: “Under the new act, he couldn’t do what he did to a rat either;” said chairman Les Stocker to the the Daily Mail.
Why has it taken so long?
Why then, has it taken so long for Britain to offer animal welfare protection to its wild animals, when it was the first country ever to pass animal welfare legislation of any kind?
Richard Martin’s bill of 1822 made it an offence to wantonly and cruelly ‘beat, abuse or ill-treat’ a wide range of domesticated animals, including horses and cattle. Even though UK animal welfare legsilation has been under constant development since then, wild animals have always been excluded. Only “captive” animals were covered and the courts tended to give the term “captive” a very narrow interpretation. Captive meant more than merely a temporary inability to escape - such as in the infamous Steele v. Rogers case in 1912, where the defendant was found not guilty of cruelty for cutting up a live whale stranded on a beach.
Going for an all-out victory
The McFall Bill outlaws all meaningless cruelty, but still allows fox hunting with dogs as well as hare coursing and the use of the neckhold snare to catch, once again, foxes. All of these are practises fiercely opposed by the animal welfare and animal rights lobby. In the past, these groups have always gone for an all-out victory. And indeed, the original version of the McFall Bill did not only address meaningless cruelty, it would also have closed down the fox hunt, forbidden the use of snares, and endangered the stag hunt. In the full-page advertisement laun-ched in support of the McFall Bill, however, meaningless cruelty was the main argument.
The hunting lobby has never had any problem in opposing meaningless cruelty - but did, of course, do whatever possible to prevent the bill from being passed in order to protect their hunting interests. Their contacts in Parliament - which were to be found among the Conservatives, stalled the bill on technicalities and stopped it from being passed. It serves the honour of the animal welfare and animal rights lobby that in view of such a fact, they finally decided not to sacrifice hedgehogs and any other wild animals being subjected to meaningless cruelty, for the cause of closing down all field sport, but accepted that those paragraphs addressing snaring and field sports were withdrawn.
The field sports and snaring conflict will now be a clean one, no longer confused by the matter of violence with no other justfication than the perverted pleasure of seeing animals suffer.