Last Sunday, BBC Countryfile aired an interview with Liam Stokes, CEO of British Game Assurance (BGA) an organisation created to “promote, develop and assure” British game meat. It’s a relatively new bolt-on to the myriad of organisations clustered around the Countryside Alliance. Indeed, Stokes himself was at the Game Conservation Trust (before the spin doctors thought that adding ” and Wildlife” to the title would look better), ran campaigns for the Countryside Alliance and sat on various British Association of Shooting and Conservation (BASC) committees. His background in killing animals, or “harvesting game” as he likes to call it, is undoubted. His organisation’s integrity, sadly, is highly questionable and some might suggest it is morally bankrupt.
BBC Countryfile asked Mr Stokes a number of awkward questions, primarily centred on the fear that in its eagerness to promote British game meat as healthy it is deliberately misleading the public. In short, as I tweeted yesterday “Liam Stokes on BBC Countryfile last night confirming game meat is toxic, there’s a reluctant/slow “voluntary” phasing out of lead ammo, the game industry won’t put toxicity warnings on food and having “ballistically perfect” ammo is more important than your health”.
To his great credit, Liam replied to say he was “happy to engage if you want to talk about those points”. I did want to talk about them and sent him a series of questions and related points, welcoming his engagement and looking forward to his responses. None were forthcoming. In my experience that’s not unusual when senior members of the Countryside Alliance are challenged about some of the inaccurate or misleading assertions they make.
So here are some facts.
Lead is toxic. It enters the food chain in game meat sold by food retailers without any warning labelling whatsoever.
Prima facie, the BGA has made no attempt to lobby the Government, the Food Standard Agency (FSA) or the major retailers to alert them to the fact that lead-shot game meat might contain poison and should be labelled accordingly. Neither does it require game suppliers to include such warnings in its own packaging. Instead it relies on the public to have already checked in with the FSA website and be familiar with its content. In the same breath, the BGA champions game meat as “healthy” and good for you and is supported by similarly inaccurate marketing campaigns on the Countryside Alliance family of social media accounts (Countryside Alliance Updates, Countryside Alliance Campaigns and Countryside Alliance Press Office).
Now I’m not sure about you but I’ve never been fully cognisant of all the FSA’s warnings so I had a look at what it has to say on its website when it comes to “lead-shot game meat”. This is what I found;
“Consuming lead is harmful, health experts advise to minimise lead consumption as much as possible. Anyone who eats lead-shot game should be aware of the risks posed by consuming large amounts of lead, especially children and pregnant women”.
Lead consumption being harmful is not new news. It’s why lead pipes in new buildings were outlawed in 1970. The Control of Pollution (Angler’s Lead Weights) Regulations came in 1986, lead was banned in paint in 1992 and in fuel in 2000. Yet the UK shooting community announced, as recently as 2020, a five year voluntary change to non-lead ammunition. That means that nearly 52 years after lead pipes were banned in homes, the shooting community is only 18 months into a period where those that want to change to non-lead ammunition are being encouraged to so but anyone who doesn’t want to won’t have to. And it’s not just the meat being bought in the shops that is being poisoned from the use of lead in ammunition. Lead poisoning found in soil, wildfowl and birds of prey and attributed to the UK shooting community has been highlighted in numerous reports by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT).
Of course, the ongoing use of lead ammunition is not the responsibility of the BGA. The BASC and other affiliated members of the Countryside Alliance have to shoulder the blame for decades of apathy, intransigence and inadequate self-regulation.
The BGA, only established in 2018 as the British Game Alliance, has as its main objective, “the implementation of an assurance scheme that covers game meat “from egg to plate”, ensuring the highest levels of welfare and the handling of meat after harvest”. Liam Stokes himself has said “the widespread adoption of Assurance is how shooting will prove it can be trusted to self-regulate”.
The objective is admirable. The challenge is huge. Convincing non-shooters that the shooting community can be trusted to self-regulate falters at the very first step. The one that requires an organisation focused on promoting game meat as healthy to show some openness, honesty and integrity and admit that, for the time being at least, it’s anything but good for you.
I wish Liam Stokes well in his work. Anything that demonstrates a willingness to evolve, extinguish bad, sometimes illegal, practices and clean up the act of the shooting community has to be a good thing. He’s up against it though. The BGA website doesn’t appear to give details of the percentage of shoots in the UK that have signed up to the BGA process. That process requires each shoot to open its doors, and books, to an audit by a company called SAI Global Assurance who are referred to on the BGA website as “leaders in food safety, auditing, product certification and training”. There’s an article on the BGA website written from the perspective of two of the SAIGA auditors and from which the following quotes are taken.
“Most shoots do not achieve assured status on first inspection”.
“Before the BGA existed, no-one ever inspected shoots or asked them to work to standards” (Remember, the BGA was only created in 2018).
“What are the most common non-conformances found during the inspection? Not being registered with the Environmental Health Department or Local Authority as a food business; not keeping medicine purchase and use records, not recording the daily temperature of the chiller when it’s in use and incorrect disposal of game unfit for human consumption and processed carcasses”. The irony of the “unfit for human consumption” comment isn’t lost on me.
The BGA is only responsible for the assurance scheme to satisfy us that game meat bought and consumed by the public is healthy. That whole “egg to plate” thing. Yet it not only avoids disclosing the toxicity in much of its produce, it actively refuses to take steps to ensure the public is warned that there may be lead in game meat and that, if there is, it can be very bad for you.
On the appalling disclosures made by SAIG on the BGA’s own website? The BASC has been around since 1981. The National Gamekeepers Organisation and the Countryside Alliance both since 1997. What on earth have they been doing?
There’s little reason to believe self-regulation is in good hands.
ecolelogical 