An article that appeared on the front page was about 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 certain that the lobsters far prefer this to being boiled alive, no one even uttered a word.

With 216 chicken farms on Malta and 52 on 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, 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? 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, who claim to tolerate hunting in autumn, say spring hunting is “not ethical” and, after what it terms as “government indifference”, it has joined a coalition in order to put an end to this legal practice that 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 in spring, justified under derogation, they attempt to indoctrinate the Maltese public with pure fabrications aimed at suiting their own anti-hunting purposes.

They ask 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 chance 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?

All who object to my quota of 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.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.