Inconsistent compassion Call it killing or culling, it remains cruel

I applaud Jenny Moxham (Letters, Oct 14) for putting into words what I have been thinking and saying for the past decade or so.

There is a gaping mismatch, a contradiction, between how recreational fishermen – mostly intelligent, respectable and decent people – torture innocent creatures like fish before smothering them, and call it ‘‘sport’’. And the more the fish struggles, and hurts, the more they like it!

How would they like it if some denizen of the sea was to come out, tie their hands behind their back, stick a great big hook attached to a rope into their mouths and then tow them out to sea to drown?

As for hunters, words fail me to adequately express my contempt. We also keep birds in cages. There is a fundamental contradiction in this. Birds express freedom, so we put them in cages! We are psychologically sick.

In Desiderata, Max Ehrmann wrote: ‘‘You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.’’ I doubt that anyone reading this would disagree with those words, but I wonder how many, in their hubris, will see that this implies that trees and stars, and fish and birds and animals are also children of the universe and have just as much right to be here as we do.

Alan Walsh

Rangiora

Taking baby penguins’ food

Further to correspondence on the cruelty of fishing, I read yesterday that only two penguin chicks have survived the disastrous breeding season at Antarctica due to extensive fishing now encroaching their waters. The parent birds have nothing to feed their offspring. I choose not to eat fish in order to not make this situation worse than it already is.

Juliet Crew

Papanui Is the term ‘‘culling’’ a sanitised version of ‘‘killing’’ or ‘‘slaughter’’ when referring to DPI’s decision to have 4000 cows slaughtered?

Compensation for the farmers? Yes. Compensation for the cows? No.

Dairying is a cruel business, especially the larger the herds.

Sadly, a seal was mauled by a dog last week. Public outrage – I am sure for the defenceless seal, and rightly so. A prosecution will follow if the dog is caught.

A driver deliberately runs over ducklings in Emmett St, also last week, and goes back for more. This driver will hopefully be found and prosecuted thanks to being caught on cellphone camera. There seems to be an irony in the species that humans select to protect and value, and those we care little about.

Claire Coveney

Opawa

Scientific blinkers

For many years, New Zealand scientists have known how to make synthetic meat and milk using techniques similar to that used for insulin. No animals are involved. We could have been world leaders in developing these products.

Instead, as Sir Peter Gluckman points out (The Press, Oct 13), a moratorium was put on genetic modification techniques. Political pressure from the farming lobby, as well as the National, Labour and Green parties, stymied all such research.

The price we have paid for this stupidity is enormous. Already the cancerous spread of intensive dairy farms has caused irrevocable harm to our environment. Now , as Sir Peter warns, the economic price could lead to widespread bankruptcy in farming communities. When are we going to take the blinkers off?

Glen Metcalf

Mt Pleasant