What is the Festival of Hunting?
The Festival of Hunting is the annual showcase for the world of hunting - a 'sport' that was banned in 2005. Hounds representing packs from across the UK will be at the Peterborough venue on Wednesday 17 July for the annual celebration of a sport made illegal nearly 20 years ago, and we want to see it end.
This year the Festival of Hunting has changed its name to the Festival of Hounds.
Rebranding this event won’t change the fact that this festival is all about celebrating an illegal activity. This is just an exercise to sanitise the brutal world of foxhunting that the festival showcases.
You can’t rebrand cruelty.
Hunts claim they are ‘trail’ hunting, but every season we see report after report that this is nothing but a sham and a smokescreen - a cover for old fashioned illegal hunting.
In 2023 ITV News exposed horrendous footage of the Avon Vale Hunt digging out foxes and throwing them to waiting hounds, while Channel 4 News worked with Cirencester Illegal Hunt Watch to expose a terrified fox founded bagged and buried alive at the meeting of the Cotswold Hunt.
Statistics for the 2022-2023 season released by the League Against Cruel Sports in April 2023 show nearly 1,000 incidents of fox hunts wreaking havoc across the country, and this is likely to be just the tip of the iceberg. It seems that hunting continues as it did before the Hunting Act 2004 was introduced.
This year the hunting season is proving to be just as brutal with a report into the League’s Animal Crimewatch service of the Quorn Hunt on the rampage next to an animal sanctuary and causing distress and anxiety to animals and humans.
It is time for change.
It is time this festival was cancelled.