LEADEN WINDS OF CHANGE

Back in 2010, the RSPB and Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) lobbied Defra and the Food Standards Agency with a request that they consider an extension of the then current restrictions on the use of lead shot as it applied to wetlands and the taking of wildfowl. Their proposition was that as lead is a toxic material with a long halflife and if ingested is generally bad for birds, beasts and humans, Defra should ask Parliament to enact a full ban on lead in ammunition. Always eager to belabour the rural population in general and country sports in particular, the then Labour government happily backed a consultation process that convened under the pithy title of the Lead Ammunition Group (LAG).

Frustrated by its glacial progress and finally by its reluctance then to unanimously and unreservedly back the ban they were lobbying for without further scientific evidence – to the extent that when its report was finally published, many in the group disassociated themselves from its wording and resigned – the council of the WWT upped the ante. It dumped the issue on the EU and ultimately into the lap of the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), another organisation that moves with the speed of a hedgehog with a hernia, but with greater political heft. Those original lobbyists contended that if