Woman who hunts to eat says vegans and shooters have common ground

Rachel Carrie. Photo: her FB account.

Rachel Carrie says that hunters can eat meat without guilt because they have no problems of animal welfare. She is a woman who has currently hit the headlines and is a former vegetarian and a mum. She says that she has fed her family for a year on 125 pigeons, 80 pheasants and partridges and 40 ducks and 4 deer.

"Vegetarians and vegans, shooters and hunters need to be educated. We are not the enemy. We have common ground."

Rachel comes from Yorkshire, UK. As a girl she was a vegetarian because she was upset by factory farming. She remained a vegetarian for five years from the age of seven. She changed her views when her father acquired a hawk. He took her out rabbiting. She says that she was okay about eating something where she had seen where it had lived. She said that she hopes that makes sense. It doesn't to me.

She says that she feels no guilt or qualms abour shooting deer. She believes that it is not an act of cruelty.

"You place a clean shot straight through the heart and that animal never knew you were there."

She believes that the animals don't suffer when they are shot and that they are not scared. The animal is not transported miles and miles to an abattoir.

Further, she says that when you shoot an animal dead to eat it you don't waste the food as people do when they buy food at a supermarket.

She firmly believes that she does not have the animal welfare issues surrounding the usual livestock farming and killing in abattoirs.

She likes to pose for photographs of the animals that she has killed. Judging by the photographs she does not only kill animals in the UK.

Comment: her argument is based upon the fact that she always makes a clean kill straight to the heart. Can she guarantee to do that every time? I don't think so. It's a very poor argument. Looking at her face in the photographs I get the distinct impression that she enjoys killing animals. I wonder whether she is making an excuse for the enjoyment of killing animals. Is she justifying it? Is she finding a reason why she kills animals and masking the true reason: entertainment.

I have heard this argument before namely that when hunters kill animals to eat then what they do is justified. Another justification that they wheel out is that it is good for conservation. I simply don't get it. There has to be some cruelty involved because you cannot guarantee killing an animal instantly without any pain with a rifle.

I get the argument about animal welfare issues with respect to farming and abattoir. There are definitely big animal welfare issues in farming which drives people to be vegans or vegetarians. But the answer is not in hunting and pretending this is good for conservation or animal welfare.

This woman likes to kill, she likes to take photographs of herself and present them online on social media. She is all over social media. If she was genuinely concerned about feeding herself why should she publicise the whole thing so energetically? Why should she embrace social media? Why can't she just get on with it quietly? To me she enjoys the celebrity. The news media has picked up on this. She is a good-looking woman. You put her face with a dead animal and it turns some people on. It turns on the hunters and shooters who are normally macho type men in America.

It's all a lot of nonsense in my opinion. I am tired of hearing these false justifications for shooting animals. There is no need for it today and a lot more needs to be done to improve animal welfare in respect of livestock. One area would be halal meat. In the UK the authorities are far too soft with respect to how halal meat. They allow it out of political correctness. I disagree with this attitude.