PETA sharply criticises hunting fair in Neuburg
This weekend, the «International Hunting and Shooting Days» are taking place at Schloss Grünau. The fair attracts recreational hunters and interested visitors with hunting dog demonstrations, bird of prey displays and numerous exhibitors. The animal rights organisation PETA voices sharp criticism of the event and calls for an end to so-called recreational hunting.
According to the organisation, recreational hunters in Germany kill more than five million wild animals as well as an estimated around 200’000 cats and numerous dogs every year, mostly out of recreational interest or under the banner of “nature connectedness”.
Hunting fairs such as the one in Neuburg, according to PETA, trivialise the violent treatment of wild animals and serve to promote a “deadly hobby”.
PETA is particularly critical of the involvement of Bavaria’s Minister of Economic Affairs Hubert Aiwanger, who is announced on the fair’s website with a welcome address.
The lobbying by State Minister Hubert Aiwanger on behalf of a bloody and cruel hobby is shameful, said PETA policy officer Peter Höffken. In addition, numerous dogs and wild birds are subjected to the stress of the fair through demonstrations.
In support of their demand for a ban on recreational hunting the organisation cites scientific findings according to which animal populations regulate themselves without human intervention. Recreational hunting, it is argued, destroys social structures within animal populations and may produce the opposite of the desired effect. PETA also draws attention to the risk of hunting accidents.
The fair organisers, by contrast, regularly emphasise the supposed contribution of recreational hunting to species conservation and the stewardship of the cultural landscape.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In our dossiers on the criticism of recreational hunting gather fact-checks, analyses and background reports. What the research says about this is shown by Hunting fact-checked: the state of research.
The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.
