The UK’s four biggest cartridge-loading companies want to put the brakes on the five-year plan to phase out lead shot for live-quarry shooting, which nine rural organisations put their names to last Monday.
Eley Hawk, Gamebore, Hull Cartridge and Lyalvale Express recently released a joint statement saying that “doing this within a five-year window without significant support is impossible.”
They say they are committed to investing in alternatives to lead and agreed that the industry needs to evolve to become more environmentally friendly, but cautioned that lead and single-use plastics could not be phased out at the same time, since “the only commercially available options are lead shot with fibre wads, steel with plastic wads or unaffordable premium non-lead shot.”
They continued: “Right now, we need to decide which to eliminate – lead or plastic? We cannot avoid using both.”
Claiming they had had no prior notice of the organisations’ plans, the cartridge firms said, “We believe the organisations have looked at a limited amount of products and assumed that these are a viable answer to the issue at hand. Unfortunately, that is not the case.”
To read the original joint statement from the shooting and rural organisations, just click here.
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