IN response to your front page article last week on the market surplus of Dartmoor ponies, unlike vice chair of commoners Mary Alford, who sees this is as a temporary situation, I would say for the last 40 years the sale situation has been desperate. Large numbers for pits and mines are not needed and we need to recognise this. The future lies in maintaining a rare breed icon as per the Exmoor pony, with this rarity  and the recognition of an ancient breed providing for their value.

Regarding auctioneer Peter Farmer's comment that they are unattractive since they inherently tend to bite and kick, I would say this has more to do with his personal encounters in the auction ring where any animal would do so under the stress of the farmer and stick. Animal auctions, currently a ritual social event as much an economic necessity, should be a relic of the past as stock should be sold or killed off the farm.

At present it appears that it has been left to horse and livestock charities to pick up the mess left by commoners unable to manage the breeding of these ponies themselves. It is unsustainable for a charity to keep on purchasing plots of land to hold the surplus with each year. It is an even more desperate situation for a charity to buy a freezer so that the local slaughterman can shoot the foals at a few months old, so that they can then be fed to the lions at the local zoo, (autumnly 300 a month according to BBC "Farming Today" which recently ran a whole programme on this).

That said, it is true that it is better the foals are shot, than passed through auctions all over the country before possibly finding their way illicitly into our burgers. With DNA traceability pulling the rug from all this, we might understand the call to make horse meat an over the counter trade.

Horses through time and evolution have through our use as working companions, by nature and nurture, come to stand apart from other farm animals. Anyone who has truly looked into a horse's eye knows that they look to us for trust — it is a basic betrayal of this trust to breed this surplus of animals for the last half century.  

 

Chris George

West Down

Yelverton