Phasing out toxic lead voluntarily STILL isn’t working…

In February last year we shared news of a study showing that voluntary phasing out of lead ammunition by the shooting industry isn’t working. Twelve months later, and we can report that not much has changed – phasing out use of lead shot STILL isn’t working.

Wild Justice has spoken about many times about lead contamination of game meat. Lead is a known toxin, it’s bad for humans and wildlife alike. Its widespread and longstanding use by the shooting sector has contaminated areas of the countryside and has caused the deaths of millions of water birds who ingest it accidentally. It also crops up in food – both for humans in the form of game meat, and even in dog food.

Other countries in Europe have completely banned the use of lead shot, and there’s been a call for an outright ban in the UK for decades, which has been strongly resisted by shooting organisations and businesses.

In 2020, nine major UK shooting and rural organisations pledged to completely to phase out lead shot in UK game hunting by 2025. Today, another study from SHOT-SWITCH and scientists at the University of Cambridge has been published in Conservation Evidence Journal . It shows that whilst a small decline in the use of lead shot appears to have happened, a huge amount of work still needs to be done to see the transition complete successfully.

In late 2023 and early 2024, researchers obtained Pheasant carcases from supermarkets, butchers, farm shops, online retailers and shoots (a number of which Wild Justice helped locate). Of the 340 they managed to get hold of, 93% were found to have been killed using lead ammunition. This has reduced only slightly from 94% of samples tested in 2022-2023. And, if we look at the rate of reduction since the pledge was made, we can see it’s very unlikely to succeed before next year; in 2020-21 and 2021-22 over 99% of pheasants were shot with lead. At this rate of decrease, it’ll take another half a century to phase out the use of lead shot completely.

In February 2020, the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust emphasised how important a move away from lead by the industry is. In a statement announcing the five year voluntary transition, they said:

“This is a vital step we must make together to safeguard our wildlife and the wider environment.””

It may have been vital, but now 80% of the way through their transition period, it’s clear it’s not been working. We think it’s about time an outright ban on using lead shot be brought into place.