ANTI-HUNTING campaigners will be feeling in a state of flux after one of their prominent spokesmen appeared to cast doubt that the sport was cruel to wild animals.

Hunting and shooting continues to provoke much passion in the letters columns of this newspaper, it's sister publications and every other newspaper in the country on at least a monthly basis.

However, Western Gazette readers may not be aware the chief executive of the League Against Cruel Sports, Douglas Batchelor, questioned the need for a proposal put forward by Lord Donoughue to make it an offence to be cruel to wild animals. The peer was recently appointed as the chairman of the Hunting Regulatory Authority.

Mr Batchelor said: "The problem with that suggestion is that someone would actually have to be cruel to the animal before they could be charged with any offence.

"Trying to prove that the fox that the hounds had ripped apart and then eaten had suffered before it died, would be extremely difficult in court without a body to produce in evidence. Worse still legislation would not actually make it a crime to deliberately chase or set dogs on a wild animal for sport."

By undermining the whole basis of the argument that hunting is cruel, it appears to have driven a coach and horses through many of the campaigns fronted by LACS and its sister organisation, the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

When I covered this issue as farming correspondent for this newspaper, I can confirm that animal welfare was at the forefront of this debate but on an equal basis was the notion it was about the upper class looking down on their minions.

From a welfare point-of-view, I wasn't necessarily convinced hunting with dogs was any less cruel than lamping – shooting at night by torch light – gassing or using snares.

Having taken the trouble to go and visit a beagle pack, The Chilmark and Clifton Foot Beagles, to find out what they did, they followed a trail of ferret's urine put down by the huntsman earlier in the day and most of the participants seemed to have accents like the Wurzels, not Boris Johnson. The trail was to comply with the Hunting Act.

The Countryside Alliance says that Mr Batchelor has accepted that it is impossible to support the argument that hunting is cruel.

They also claim that Mr Batchelor might be on the verge of a "Damascene conversion" and join two of his predecessors, James Barrington and Richard Course, in concluding that banning the sport would be detrimental to animal welfare.

The alliance's head of media Tim Bonner, said: "For decades the anti-hunting movement has argued that the very act of pursuing a mammal is cruel and should be prohibited to address animal welfare concerns.

"For decades the hunting community has argued that hunting is at least as humane as other methods of wild mammal management. Now, having successfully promoted the ridiculous Hunting Act on the basis of animal welfare, Mr Batchelor is admitting that LACS actually has no interest in legislation that actually addresses cruelty.

"For years we have argued that a prohibition on hunting had nothing to do with animal welfare and everything to do with a misplaced hatred of people who hunt. Now Mr Batchelor has accepted that the case against hunting is unproven, and unproveable, on welfare grounds and that it is the activity, rather than any impact on animal welfare, that so offends anti-hunting activists."

Despite what has been said animal welfare has to be at centre of this debate. A licensing authority might be the answer with hunts having to be rigorously monitored and even with such polarised positions, a compromise can still be reached.