BWM Comment on Bateson's Second Welfare Equation.
This four page document, which includes on page 4 a complex statistical approach to reaching a straight forwarded conclusion, still wrongly asserts that the welfare costs of hunting and wounding are the same, but importantly acknowledges that the time dimension is left out in such comparisons and must be considered.
The reader will draw their own conclusions as to why Bateson and Bradshaw chose not to complete what they regarded as a simple formulation, by placing the necessary revised and accurate parameters in the equation, which would have swung the conclusion heavily in favour of hunting.
The fact that leaders of countryside organisations were oblivious to the quality and quantity of the scientific support, which overturned Bateson and Bradshaw’s conclusions, and laid open the route to providing the proof of least suffering through the welfare equation, is beyond belief.
Subsequently, through the failure to listen to, or be aware of the welfare equation evidence, both Scottish and English Parliaments were left to decide on whether hunting was cruel. The subsequent legal actions, which did not properly address the comparative suffering of different methods of deer, fox and hare killing, have needlessly wasted millions of pounds.
Edmund Marriage