The Federation for Hunting and Conservation - Malta (FKNK) refers to the news item Hunters Complain Of 'Brainwashing' Questionnaire (December 27) concerning two incidents in which a holy picture of St Francis was distributed to children at the Zurrieq primary school at the end of October, and a questionnaire was distributed to Siggiewi primary school children before the Christmas holidays.
Printed on the former were the words: "Saint Francis of Assisi loved nature, especially the birds. He never shot them or killed them in traps or caught them in nets."
How ridiculous! For that matter he never had muesli for breakfast and he never brushed his teeth with toothpaste every morning and night either. Should children copy him?
Printed also were the words: "On the island of Malta there are up to 1.5 million migrating birds killed annually." What a pity this holy worshipper did not give this information to the Ministry for the Environment. He/she could have saved all the money being spent on the current study of Malta's carnet de chasse by a foreign scientific institute.
With reference to the Siggiewi questionnaire, we query whether children are in a position to say whether the police "are doing a good job to control illegal hunting in Malta" when BirdLife (Malta) itself alternates between praising and lambasting the police! We query the relevance of asking children whether anyone in their family "is or was" a hunter.
We query the educational value of such a questionnaire addressed to children when the reaction from some readers of timesofmalta.com, presumably adults who should know better, merely reflects their lack of knowledge of the subject and their consequent bad judgment on the issue. For example, take the comment that "lead pellets from shotgun ammunition are significantly deleterious to ecosystems". This is incorrect. It applies only to duck shooting in shallow water places, and a solution has been found in the use of steel, bismuth and other shot. The comment about "conservation" is also out of place, apart from the fact that the fox is still considered vermin in 21st century Britain. Any sane person knows that hunting and conservation go together. Other comments do not make a distinction between target shooting and game hunting. It also seems that some of the commentators still do not know how to draw the line between hunting and its abuse.
The ones who drew up the questionnaire show their own prejudice and incompetence by indulging in an exercise, falsely referred to as "educational", that expects children to perform where adults fail dismally. One cannot help feeling that the children are being used.
The FKNK, therefore, and yet again, urges the Minister of Education to take the necessary steps to prevent, in the schools under his jurisdiction, the circulation of similar questionnaires in future and other non-educational material whose clear intention is to poison the minds of youngsters against hunters.