http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/World/2007/11/29/pf-4694163.html
November 29, 2007
Hunting ban upheld
By AP

LONDON -- The image of Britons in scarlet coats galloping over fields as their dogs chase foxes is fixed in the popular imagination.

But Britain's highest court ruled yesterday that laws banning the most brutal aspect of the hunts must stand.

Hunters had appealed two bans: one passed by the Scottish Parliament in 2002 and another, enacted in 2004, in England and Wales. The laws banned using dogs to hunt mammals.

Hunting supporters argued the laws violated the rights of people whose livelihoods depended on hunting. But the Law Lords - a committee of the House of Lords that acts as Britain's highest court - dismissed the appeals.

The 2004 law banning hunting in England and Wales must "be taken to reflect the conscience of a majority of the nation," Lord Bingham said.

In rejecting the associated appeal against the Scottish ban, Lord Hope wrote that "there was adequate factual information to entitle the Scottish Parliament to conclude that fox hunting inflicted pain on the fox," and was therefore cruel.