Animal rights activists want pheasant boycott

Animal welfare campaigners want restaurant diners to refuse to eat pheasant because of allegations of cruelty.

The lobby group Animal Aid says its research shows the 20 million pheasants raised each year to be shot as game are subject to similar conditions to factory-farmed chicken.

The group's campaigns co-ordinator, Yvonne Taylor, says pheasants have their wings tied, their beaks clipped and plastic bits inserted in their mouths to prevent their beaks closing. She says large quantities of antibiotics and chemicals are used on them to control disease, and pheasants are so weak and feeble by the time they're released into the wild that even those which survive the shooting season are unlikely to live to the following year.

The charity has also accused shooters of breaching their voluntary code of conduct by failing to kill wounded birds quickly.

"I've never eaten pheasant, but I imagine the same criticisms that are made about the taste of intensively reared chickens could be made of pheasants," said Taylor.