Sainsbury’s urged to adopt humane wildlife deterrence measures following fox culling

UPDATE: Sainsbury’s commits to humane wildlife deterrence following public pressure

A member of the public witnessed the fox being trapped and shot by a ‘pest’ controller as they passed the store and took to social media to express their disgust. Following this, Sainsbury’s issued a statement confirming that a number of foxes ‘have tried to gain access to the store’ and ‘pest’ controllers were consulted due to the potential ‘health risk’.

In their letter, Animal Aid make it clear that trapping and shooting foxes is not only cruel, but has proven to be an ineffective method of resolving conflicts with urban foxes. There are a number of companies and organisations that specialise in humane wildlife deterrence – including, Fox-A-Gon, Humane Wildlife Solutions and The Fox Project.

Says Animal Aid Campaigner, Tod Bradbury:

‘This is a completely unnecessary and cruel act that goes against government advice which states that killing foxes is an ineffective way of resolving urban fox conflicts. This is because once territories have been made vacant, new foxes quickly move in. As such, the government recommends the use of non-lethal deterrence instead. Trapping foxes causes them great stress; they will not sit quietly in the cage, they will pace frantically up and down and desperately try to escape. This will continue, until the ‘pest’ controller returns to shoot them in the head. We hope that Mr Coupe takes our concerns, and those of the public, on board and commits to adopting a policy of only using humane and non-lethal methods when conflicts arise with wildlife.

‘Animal Aid calls for tolerance and compassion towards all wild animals; they are merely trying to live their lives in a world where their natural habitats are being increasingly eroded.’

ENDS

Notes for editor

– This story was reported on Kent Online on 7^th June 2017, the article includes the statement from Sainsbury’s.

– For more information, or to arrange an interview, please contact Tod on 01732 364546 ext. 223

– A copy of the letter sent to Mike Coupe is available on request

If you are having any issues with foxes or other urban wildlife, there are humane methods of deterrence available and most of the time these are very simple and easy. You can download our humane deterrence fact sheets here.