I read with interest that …

I read with interest that “New train and trial areas were last approved to be established in 1997 and were intended to be phased-out over time”.
Presumably the conditions for establishing a limited number of train and trial areas was only granted with the condition they would be phased out! So what exactly has changed?

Not only are the poor animals that will be used as bait, subjected to cruel and inhumane trapping, but they are then kept in “less than ideal conditions” aka terrified and constantly stressed, ( anything other than back in nature is less than ideal) until they get brutally attacked by a “learner” dog, or die of fright or starvation.

Please provide details of how these facilities are inspected and monitored by Government resources , (or have they been on the honour system of reports all this time?) and the documentation they are required to provide to qualify for and maintain their licenses.

How many times have licensed wildlife vets been called out to provide care or medical attention to these animals - especially those already maimed by inhumane trapping?

For those rabbits “transferred” from other licensed facilities, what condition are they in? Too old and sick to be of use where they came from? If they are raised for food or medical experiments are they “impaired” by lack of exercise due to caging? Too fat to even run away if they’ve been bred for meat? They will most certainly not be wild rabbits which should be the “requirement” for the training of hunting dogs!

For sick or infected animals - rabies is easily contracted from infected prey animals - what restrictions are in place to prevent cross contamination of species?

What if any diseases or pathogens are these poor animals tested for and are they quarantined under humane supervised conditions before being admitted as hunting bait? What would constitute humane conditions for a wild animal to be kept under other than being allowed to return to the wild?

I would also point out that for scent training purposes, a stressed animal smells distinctly different than a relaxed one, so you are training / rewarding a dog for detecting an animal in distress at such facilities.

So if your dog can’t quite match that smell he has been trained to recognize, he will soon learn to create it by attacking and torturing his prey to create that “stress effect” smell. Dogs trained under such conditions will be vicious and unreliable!

As I do not believe you can provide favourable or indeed any answers to the majority of these questions under your current regulations, I urge you to withdraw this proposed legislation change and go back to the spirit of the 1997 proposal and withdraw current licences from the remaining 24 premises, as originally intended when this horrible experiment was first enacted.