THOUGH better training for workers dealing with animals is usually welcome, the Government-approved new element of an NVQ in "animal care" that is "relevant to working in hunt kennels" seems a grotesque and hypocritical contradiction in terms.

Hunt kennels are centres at which packs of dogs are trained to terrorise and kill defenceless wild animals for the amusement of their followers.

It's an open secret that many hunts continue to do this by shamelessly exploiting the weaknesses, loopholes and lax enforcement of the Hunting Act.

Is this "animal care"?

Then there are the pets and livestock regularly chased, mauled or killed by out-of-control hounds and the frequency with which people put their own dogs [and the public] at risk by allowing them to run on to roads, railways and other hazards, sometimes resulting in injury and/or death.

Hunt kennels habitually and ruthlessly dispose of the hounds they so purport to "love" – mostly with a bullet in the head – when they are deemed too old to hunt [at about half their natural life span]. Protect Our Wild Animals (www.powa.org.uk), using hunter-provided data, calculates that hunts probably "cull" over 9,000 hounds annually.

No amount of NVQ certificates will paper over the inherent cruelty of hunts and hunters.

We need the Act to be strengthened to properly arrest their awful abuses of both wild and domestic animals, not repealed to reward their ruthless rapacity.

Alan Kirby

Protect Our Wild Animals

Hayle