It was reported today in the Shooting Times that research carried out by Wild Justice shows a significant fall in the use of non-toxic shot, as lead levels in game sold to the public decreases.
The team at Wild Justice — Mark Avery, Chris Packham, and Ruth Tingay — have once again been on their annual meat-aisle supermarket sweep. The narrative is usually the same — the trio pop into a few retailers up and down the country to buy game, which is then sent off to be analysed for lead levels.
For the first time, there is evidence that lead levels in game being sold to the public are lower. The Wild Justice blog comments that it is too soon to whoop with joy and there is a long way to go. But it gives credit to Holme Farmed Venison, whose Eat Wild partridge breasts were “the first samples we have seen of game meat where all of the samples had below the legal level of lead for non-game meat”.
The numbers tested this year were 23% lower than the previous year's results.
Liam Bell, a headkeeper and former chairman of the NGO, told ST that they had lots of guns last season who turned up using steel voluntarily. He himself used it on most of the days he shot and found it to be “very effective”, although he admitted it does take a bit of time to get confident with it.
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