DR JOHN Salvatore accuses me of using 'twisted logic to defend hunting' Letters, November 9, 2009.

In my opinion it is not my logic that is twisted, but that which Government ministers use to defend the absurd strictures of the Hunting Act.

It's worth detailing the view of Jim Fitzpatrick — our farming Minister, and ex-Glaswegian fireman, who clearly does not have a clue about the countryside.

Mr Fitzpatrick wrote to me confirming that if one did wish to comply with the flushing-out exemption one was required to shoot the flushed-out mammals.

His justification was that it prevented the exemption being used as an excuse to chase and/or kill the flushed-out animal with dogs. This is mind-bogglingly stupid.

It's illegal to chase and kill wild mammals with dogs.

If people are going to do that then they are hardly going to obey the law and shoot them as soon as they are flushed out.

The only people that would shoot the animals would be the law-abiding ones and they would stop their dogs killing them anyway.

The Labour grassroots anti-hunt group Support the Hunting Act (Ban) UK, has extensive discussion of the flushing exemption and the requirement to kill animals.

The group's organiser, Gary Hills, claims this requirement was forced onto the statute book by pro-hunt lords.

He claims no one in the anti-hunt movement supports it, but that Labour is powerless to remove the requirement to kill animals from the Hunting Act without Lords reform.

He says ministers have to defend the wording of the law — implying they don't actually support it either.

He does not appear to see anything wrong with this. I do. Government ministers such as Jim Fitzpatrick, and his boss Hillary Benn, lack the integrity and courage to come clean and admit the failings of the Hunting Act.

Giles Bradshaw

Rose Ash, South Molton