A Day of Action for Animals at Belfast’s Vegan Festival

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been out and about gathering support for our NI Election Campaign by encouraging people to contact their local Candidates to sign up to our pledge to support a complete ban on hunting with dogs in  Northern Ireland.

With the help of Mr Fox, we spent the day at the Belfast Vegan Festival meeting with the public and raising awareness about ‘Northern Ireland’s Hunting Shame’. We were delighted at how many people took the time to engage with our Northern Ireland Team to educate themselves about our Campaign. Mr Fox also made himself available to be photographed with his many fans!

Currently, we have a shameful track record on wild animal welfare, being the only nation in the UK where there is absolutely no legislation or legal restriction on people using packs of dogs to chase, terrorise and kill foxes, deer, hares and rabbits. Northern Ireland is now significantly behind the other regions in the UK who introduced legislation almost two decades ago! A recent poll by Survation found that 73% of people in Northern Ireland want the Assembly to revisit the issue of hunting and implement legislation to ban it.

Everyone we spoke to was appalled at Stormont’s recent failure to outlaw this barbaric practice and wanted to find out how they could make this Election really count for animals. Therefore, we provided people with literature that included a ‘Call To Action’ link and QR Code that enabled them to contact their local Candidates asking them to sign up to our pledge in order to secure their vote on Polling Day.

One lady we spoke with had been a Member of the League for over 30 years – it was an honour to meet her! She expressed her dismay at the Northern Ireland Assembly’s wasted opportunity to pass a Private Members Bill that would outlaw hunting with dogs in December 2021. As a result, she has decided she would no longer be voting for a Party she’d been loyal to all her life. Instead, she will be transferring her vote to a Party who fully supported a complete ban on hunting wild animals with dogs in  Northern Ireland . She praised our efforts to continue with our campaign to finally stop the horrific cruelty inflicted on hunted animals in Northern Ireland, all in the name of this so-called ‘sport’!

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank EVERYONE we met and also to thank our fabulous volunteers throughout our Northern Ireland’s Hunting Shame Campaign. Together we can continue to work tirelessly to finally consign this horrendous practice to the history books where it belongs.

You can read in our manifesto what we’re asking the next Assembly to do on hunting and other areas of animal welfare concern.