«Genusswoche»: When Baselland sells carrion as a delicacy

The 14th Baselbiet Genusswoche takes place from 10 to 20 September under the motto «Forest & Game».

More than 50 events spread across all five districts are intended to put «pleasure» centre stage, with game dishes in restaurants, courses and an adventure mobile run by Jagd Baselland. President Martin Thommen sees this as a welcome platform for bringing the «multifaceted» hobby hunt closer to the public.

But since when has carrion been a pleasure? What is served up as a delicacy at the Genusswoche is not meat from a sterile abattoir staffed by trained professionals, but the product of hobby hunters working in the forest without refrigeration, without hygiene standards and without proper slaughtering. As «Game meat from hobby hunters is carrion» points out, animals shot during driven hunts often lie for hours before they are recovered, while rituals such as sounding the horn over the bag or the hunters' feast are celebrated. This is not food production, this is carrion on a plate.

Unquestioning hunting PR instead of journalism

The article by Simon Tschopp in the bz Basel adopts Jagd Baselland's self-portrayal virtually unchecked: «multifaceted», nature conservation, care of the cultural landscape, out working «when others are asleep». Not a single critical question about animal welfare, about scientific evidence or about the numerous documented incidents in the very same canton appears anywhere in the text. Exactly how this pattern works is shown in the dossier «The media and hunting topics: how language, images and ‹experts› shape the debate»: Terms such as «Hege» (game management), «regulation» or «multifaceted» sound caring and technical, yet they unspokenly convey the world view of the hunting lobby as soon as the media adopt them without comment. Anyone who turns a press conference held by Jagd Baselland one-to-one into an article is not practising journalism but issuing a communiqué.

The image of the press conference itself is equally telling: alongside Martin Thommen, Liestal's mayor Daniel Spinnler, Gastro Baselland president Fabienne Ballmer, Baselland Tourism project manager Romona Walter, the president of the Bakers and Confectioners' Association Reto Ziegler and Baselland Tourism managing director Michael Kumli all posed together for the camera. A municipal authority, the tourism association and the hospitality sector have thus allowed themselves to be harnessed to the hunting lobby's cart, providing it with an official, apolitical stage that it could hardly ever have organised for itself.

This is not a one-off appearance but structurally entrenched: on the official website of Baselland Tourism, Jagd Baselland figures among the «partners» of the Week of Taste, on an equal footing with the town of Laufen, the Baselbiet Fruit Growers' Association and the energy utility ebl. An interest group that lives off the killing of wild animals is thereby officially integrated into the canton's tourism marketing, complete with logo placement and legitimacy conferred by public and semi-public sponsoring institutions. Anyone who allows themselves to be co-opted in this way should not be surprised when their own PR ends up in the newspaper unchecked.

Just how deep this integration goes is shown by the programme itself: the opening evening on 10 September is staged under the title «Weidmannsheil!» with hunting horn players and «information on hunting». Two «Forest and Game courses», organised directly by the hunting societies of Sissach and Therwil, were already fully booked weeks in advance. At the Liestal truffle market, the Chutzenkopf hunting society will also appear with its own stand. The Week of Taste thus not only provides the hunting lobby with a stage, but grants it direct, uncritical access to an audience that actually wanted to discover bakeries, fruit growing and regional products.

A driven hunt means mortal terror, not quality

A large share of the game meat promoted during the Week of Taste comes from driven hunts, in which animals are chased for hours before being shot. In their death throes the animals release stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol, which flood the entire organism and remain detectable in the muscle tissue. «Driven hunt in the Willbrigwald – fear, blood and the perpetrators» describes this process vividly. Technically, it has long been documented: «Game meat: risks, lead and hunting myths» notes that driven hunts and drive hunts in particular produce the poorest-quality meat of all, frequently contaminated with ammunition particles on top of that.

Lead contamination is no marginal issue either. The Federal Food Safety Office expressly advises pregnant women, children and women of childbearing age against eating game meat shot with lead, as summarised in the dossier «An introduction to hunting criticism». Anyone selling carrion from an animal chased to death and riddled with lead fragments is not selling a quality product, but the result of animal cruelty, with a health risk thrown in; see also «Warning: beware of game meat from hobby hunters». Just how little control prevails at such driven hunts is shown by a case from Muttenz: «Hobby hunting in Basel-Landschaft: hunting dogs chase down a wild boar» documents how a young wild boar was chased and bitten by hunting dogs for over eight minutes while the hobby hunters present looked on without intervening.

700 foxes a year: regulation without any basis

Each year in the canton of Basel-Landschaft, around 1,500 roe deer, 1,000 wild boars and some 700 foxes are killed. The official justification is virtually always the same: population regulation. For the red fox, this justification has been scientifically refuted. More than 30 years of wildlife biology research consistently show no lasting regulatory effect from fox hunting, because compensation effects such as higher birth rates and immigration quickly offset the kills. The canton of Lucerne, the only one to systematically record the health status of foxes killed, arrives at over 98 per cent healthy animals among those shot – an indication that disease control does not hold up as an argument either.

Baselland itself, of all places, has already exposed this contradiction: the authorities backpedalled in a second statement on the cantonal fox-hunting petition, after an earlier answer had managed without a single piece of scientific evidence, «Basel-Landschaft backpedals: first regulation, now ‹no objective›». Anyone who can no longer formulate a clear objective themselves should not be celebrating such a practice with a week of culinary indulgence.

The danger extends beyond the forest

The public is already exposed to additional risks in the forest during the hobby hunt, and the indulgence week aggravates this problem instead of addressing it. Again and again, uninvolved people are injured by hobby hunters. Such cases are not one-off slip-ups but a documented pattern: «The great hunting lie: how hobby hunters massage Europe's accident figures and conceal their dead» shows how systematically injuries and deaths in the context of hobby hunting are played down across Europe.

Those at risk are not only people who happen to be present, but also people who observe hobby hunting critically. In Baselland itself, a Hunt Watch activist was subjected to physical violence by a beater while observing a driven hunt in Füllinsdorf and Arisdorf, as «Violent assault on activist during driven hunt» documents. Animal welfare activist Olivier Bieli has also already been the target of intimidation in Baselland: «Hobby hunters against animal rights campaigners in Basel-Landschaft» describes how the tyres of his vehicle were slashed while he was observing a driven hunt. Anyone who invites people on a woodland walk or a bike tour during the indulgence week, while shooting is going on in the same area and observers are being intimidated, is accepting a real danger to the public instead of addressing it.

Hobby hunters: a group with a striking potential for violence

Martin Thommen stresses that hobby hunters are out and about «when others are asleep». That sounds like a unique selling point, but it is not one: emergency services, nursing staff and many other occupational groups are also active at night, entirely without firearms. The truly striking point lies elsewhere. Access to firearms and an environment that normalises killing as a leisure activity repeatedly correlate with serious violence. Recent cases such as «Another femicide by a hobby hunter: 90-year-old kills his wife» or «Femicide in Faido, explosion in Leontica: not isolated cases, but a pattern among hobby hunters» reveal a pattern that cannot be explained away as isolated incidents.

The fact that 20 to 25 new hobby hunters are trained in Basel-Landschaft every year and that there is «no shortage of new recruits» is, from the perspective of wildlife protection, no cause for celebration but rather cause for concern.

Nature conservation does not need firearms

Anyone who wants to engage in genuine nature conservation can do so without a rifle. Wildflower strips, hedgerows and near-natural gardens do more for biodiversity and ground-nesting birds than any driven hunt — and without a single animal dying. That, of all things, a «culinary delights» event should stage hobby hunting as a multifaceted, likeable leisure pursuit and sell its carrion as a delicacy ignores animal suffering, scientific evidence and a documented risk of violence in equal measure.

What a scientifically grounded alternative to current fox hunting practice could look like is demonstrated by the canton of Zug, the only canton to have commissioned an independent study (see the overview «An end to fox hunting»). Until Basel-Landschaft takes this step too, the «culinary delights week» remains a marketing label for a practice that does not withstand critical scrutiny.

Geneva shows that there is another way

That a «culinary delights week» should advertise with hobby hunting of all things is also remarkable because Switzerland has long had a functioning counter-model. The canton of Geneva abolished hobby hunting back in 1974 by popular vote and has since relied on professional, state-run wildlife management with trained game wardens instead of leisure-time marksmen. There are no driven hunts there, no high seats disfiguring the landscape, and no „regulation» of species such as the fox or badger merely because it happens to be hunting season. Instead, Geneva relies on deterrence, targeted prevention and scientifically justified individual measures.

If Basel-Landschaft wants to devote a «culinary delights week» to the theme of forest and wildlife, a look towards Geneva would have been more appropriate than providing a stage for Jagd Baselland. There it could be shown what wildlife management can look like without cruelty to animals, without endangering uninvolved parties and without glorifying carrion as a delicacy.

As soon as a wild animal is shot, its body begins to change: the blood coagulates, there is initially no cooling, and any delay increases the hygiene risks. For Wild beim Wild the matter is clear: what is marketed as a regional delicacy after lying around in the forest for hours is carrion – not a culinary treat.

Instead of the animals being recovered, gralloched and chilled without delay, at social hunts the ritual of the «Verblasen der Strecke» (sounding of the bag) often comes first: the killed animals are laid out side by side, hunting-horn players sound the death calls for each species, and the hunting fraternity pays itself its «last respects». Hunting tradition speaks of respect for the game. From an animal welfare perspective, however, it remains a sectarian piece of theatre staged around the killed animals, while the handling that is decisive for meat hygiene waits in the background.

What no professional butcher's shop or abattoir could allow itself is sold in hobby hunting as nature romanticism. In a slaughterhouse, bleeding out must take place as quickly as possible after stunning; regulated hygiene procedures, meat inspection and chilling then follow.