Waitrose ends sale of game birds shot with toxic lead as experts call on Government to ban its use

Supermarket chain Waitrose will stop selling birds shot with lead.

It comes after the government’s independent expert group urged the use of non-toxic ammunition to reduce the risk to human health and that of wildlife.

Campaigners also warned that animals including waterfowl and types of predator birds are killed by ingesting it.     

They noted in a letter to The Guardian it was 100 years ago to the day an American scientist warned that waterfowl eating lead shot was ‘dangerous and usually fatal malady’.

The campaigners referenced a study which warned that up to 100,000 waterfowl birds are killed every year by ingesting ammunition.

The study said concluded that ‘lead derived from ammunition now appears to be the most significant geographically widespread and common source of unregulated environmental lead contamination to which wildlife is exposed’.

The referenced study warned: ‘Predators and scavengers can be exposed to lead in dead and unretrieved game, discarded viscera from shot deer, and in the flesh of prey that have been wounded but survived’.  

Waitorse expects all lead shot to be phased out by the start of the 2020-21 shooting season, The Guardian reported.  

The move has been praised by the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC), whose spokesman told the newspaper that Waitrose ‘deserve huge congratulations’. 

A Waitrose spokesperson said: ‘From season 2019/20, we will begin phasing out the use of lead shot on the Estates from which we source game, requiring instead that the estates require their guns to use lead alternatives such as steel or bismuth. 

‘By season 2020/21 all of our game will be brought to bag without the use of any lead ammunition.’ 

Supermarket chain Waitrose will stop selling birds shot with lead. It comes after the government’s independent expert group urged the use of non-toxic ammunition to reduce the risk to human health and that of wildlife. A stock image of a Waitrose store is pictured above [File photo]